A repressed middle aged man realizes that his life had become one of misery and loneliness. After becoming friends with a blind writer he had to evict from his house, he finds the inspiration and courage he needs to break all the rules he had been forced to abide by and to reconnect with life's joy and excitement.
The Principality of Wallachia with the capital Bucharest (today a region of Romania) before the Revolution of the year 1848. A couple of secret societies are working to chase away the Prince Gheorge Bibescu from his throne, arms are transported on secret ways, preparing the first popular revolts in Bucharest, as the first act of the Revolution of 1848, which revolution is the first impulse of the later act of the Union of the Wallachia with Moldova (Romanian United Principalities in 1862, Kingdom of Romania in 1881 and Kingdom of Greater Romania 1918, with Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia).
A medic is hunted by guilt of killing a man in a car accident, a cop who staged an experiment of placing a dummy on the side of the road and a dead man found found on the side of the road.
In 1919 at the end of WW1 Romanian peasant Manolache Preda returns to his native village where he finds his woman taken by another and his land sold to the local landowner.