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.

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.

When a woman finds her purse stolen, she retraces the steps of her eventful day only to realize that the encounters, and her life as a whole, are empty and purposeless.

A slice of grim parts of life

A starving man wandering the countryside finds solace in a young woman's cottage where she offers him food and rest. But when the young woman starts to behave as if the man is a threat, he must decide whether or not to live up to her fears.

In a world where there is no smell, taste, pain, death, or digestion, the people are left hungering for one thing: love.

A group of working class people run a dangerous path toward a promised Elysium, and those who survive are rewarded with nothing they can appreciate or comprehend.

A man reflects on the loneliness of his childhood home, where his family would fervently clean the house every Saturday for guests on Sunday who would never show.

After a terrible accident, a boy and his family spend the next years in a depression that verges masochism.

A mother struggles to provide her daughter with comfort in an unstable home as her husband constantly searches for new employment.