Tragic Anna leaves her cold husband for dashing Count Vronsky in 19th-century Russia.

In the summer of 1944 soldier Csorba is rewarded with furlough at a price of having committed a murder. He escapes. He tries to get to the heights of the Carpathians with Mother, to the cave of those who wish to die. That is where his mother and his father, the deserter, might be hiding.