In a bombed-out church, decorated with the detritus of life (old furniture, a bathtub, a tinny piano, bits of lace, and lots of birds), two friends, Yorick and Ondrej, live apart from the world. They take in a young woman, Martha, a Jewish orphan. All three are devoted to playing the fool as a measure of distance from the horrors they have already absorbed; they re-create a family and a home, a version of their coveted "white house." This is a mad man's Jules and Jim, a post-apocalyptic Band of Outsiders; it might have been set in any age, but a beautiful three-way love (not sex) scene in a gutted American convertible sets it firmly in our own. It could be seen as the ultimate East European housing-shortage (and/or furniture-moving) film, but this one, shot in the fall of 1968, gives a rationale for this way of life: "When soldiers invade your country and steal your house and your language, if you build yourself a house in your soul, you will be happy." Jakubisko links this treachery with the experience of another orphan, Hamlet, in incident (the hero's name, Yorick, an old man's Polonius-like death, etc.), and in theme, for these are youths driven sane by looking at a mad world. Like other Slovak films in our series, such as Lilies of the Field, this is a plea for difference that sets out in a spirit of humorous rebellion and ends tragically.