The film is a brilliant and ultimately damning portrayal of the world of psychiatry. When we first meet Paul, he seems to be living a normal, well-adjusted life with his parents in Reykjavik. He is interested in art and music, and has just begun a relationship with a young woman. But there are hints that there may be something terribly wrong with Paul's world, and when his behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, his parents are left with no choice but to have him committed to a psychiatric hospital. There, Paul sets about befriending some of his fellow-inmates. One of them is convinced that he wrote all the Beatles' songs and telepathically sent them to the members of the group. A second, the educated and cultivated Victor, occasionally turns into Hitler. The third insists that he wrote his doctoral thesis on Schiller and defended it at the University of China...