The film follows the life of Franciszek Retman, known to friends as Franek, as he is accepted into a physics program and begins shaping his path in academia. He forms a relationship with a fellow student, and they become a couple; however, after a party where Franek experiments with a joint of cannabis, he returns to her apartment to find her being assaulted by another man. He intervenes, is beaten, and his girlfriend suddenly rebuffs him, breaking up and casting him out onto the street. The heartbreak marks the start of a ferried course through ambition and consequence, and the narrative follows his quiet, relentless pursuit of knowledge against a backdrop of personal upheaval.
He is later seen among other students vacationing at a mountain lodge, where a planned climb to the peak becomes a crucible for his first real brush with death as a friend dies on the ascent. He visits the corpse at night, studying it by the glow of a burning match. It’s at this lodge that he meets Małgosia and falls in love; the romance deepens until they decide to elope, sealing a new, shared life amid mounting pressures.
A professor’s discussion about his future settings frames Franek’s growing realization that his academic trajectory must accelerate if he’s to leave a mark in physics. Intercut with slides showing young Einstein and Planck, the sequence underscores the idea that brilliance often appears early, urging him to push forward despite obstacles.
His path takes a turn when he enters military service, during which Małgosia reveals she is pregnant. Franek marries her, and the child is born, but the family’s finances strain him enough to force a pause in his formal studies. He takes a job in a hospital, evaluating medical equipment, participating in sleep studies for extra money, and eventually becoming a full orderly. The dreamlike episodes of his sleep studies merge with his waking life, offering stark glimpses of fear and fate: he dreams of being trapped in a courtyard while strangers peer from windows, and a man with an axe chases Małgosia and their child.
In the hospital world, Franek becomes involved in brain surgeries and research exploring schizophrenia, including the use of electrodes to stimulate different brain areas. He forges a friendship with a patient—a mathematician whose brain tumor triggers epileptic fits. After the tumor’s removal, the mathematician dies, and Franek assists a colleague in the autopsy. The moment exposes him to a chilling detachment: when asked what happens to the brain, he is told it will be archived as a textbook example. Disgusted by this cold approach, Franek steals the brain and destroys it, a pivotal act that marks his deepening disillusionment with the clinical gaze.
Seeking answers beyond science, he visits a monastery, hoping for existential clarity. A dream sequence follows—an image of a monk’s death entombed, then a montage of rotting corpses in catacombs—before the story turns back to his return to academia. He resumes his studies with renewed vigor, earns a doctorate, and begins a career as a researcher and lecturer. Time moves swiftly as he witnesses the 1968 Polish political crisis on the radio, and after he finally publishes his first paper, he collapses while playing with his son. A doctor informs him that his heart issues stem from aging, and that things are unlikely to improve as they once did. At the riverside, alongside his wife and child, he watches driftwood float downstream, a quiet, somber coda to a life spent chasing knowledge.
Throughout the film, there are frequent interludes of lectures and chalkboard diagrams that address existential questions about physics and biology—the nature of time, the sense of self, and the human impulse to understand. These moments frame Franek’s journey, weaving intellectual inquiry with intimate, sometimes destabilizing experiences, and they reinforce the sense that education and ambition are inseparable from the human longing to find meaning in a world where mortality is never far away.
