A research psychologist visits a peculiar asylum patient who recounts his life story. The patient warns the researcher about how obsession with the pursuit of knowledge can make one lose sight of their humanity until it is unsalvageable.

A slice of grim parts of life

Set in 1914 Detroit, a young man with a life threatening condition is forced to live a mundane life protected from the outside world. When a new friend begins showing him the joys life has to offer, he is forced to decide how he wants to live.

A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

An aging electrical engineer's intensifying sensation of detachment culminates in a series of debilitating headaches. As he works through fatigue, setbacks, and pain, he finally confronts the source of his desolation.

In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.

An old woman experiences several blackouts as she approaches death.

A dying man revisits his lifelong hobby of fishing while confronting memories of his dead grandfather and the traumatic experiences of his childhood.

In Michigan, a recently divorced professor reflects on what it means to exist, first alone in his empty apartment and then alongside his student in a mission to find a missing girl.

In this satire, a cartographer discovers an isolated North African village in which the sole occupation is counting upward. Living in their utopia forces him to reckon with the utility of reason and the necessity of pain in human life.