Three stories spanning eight centuries come together in 1972 Los Angeles when award-winning, now-drunken cinematographer Jack Mercer finds a luminous 12th-century Japanese scroll and the lost seventh reel of a mystical silent film in a forgotten basement. With the help of a team of seasoned Hollywood filmmakers who understand exactly what they're attempting, Jack-once a drunk, now a man with a mission-reassembles the long-buried pieces to transmit universal truths about existence in a medium built on illusion. Along the way they discover that bringing forgotten masterpieces back to life may be the most transformative work any of them has ever done.