Welcome to a city in chaos where eight-hour traffic jams occur, where some angry citizens beat up a delivery man with a foreign accent, and where protesters in a parade return to ancient flagellation practices. Lasse (Sten Andersson) turns down his wife's request to stay at home with her on her day off and arrives at work only to find out that he's been fired. Stunned by the injustice of it all given the fact that he's worked there for thirty years, Lasse grabs hold of his boss's leg and is dragged down the hall as he pleads unsuccessfully with him.

In the next vignette a portly magician (Lucio Vucino) gets a member of the audience to volunteer for the traditional sawing-a-man-in-half trick. To everyone's surprise, the blades cut into the stomach of the volunteer who is rushed to the hospital. We see the disastrous results of his painful recuperation where any little movement sends him into a ballad of moans.

In the third vignette, Kalle (Lars Nordh) appears on a subway with his face covered in ash. It turns out that he has set his furniture store on fire for the insurance money. This middle-ager's woes are magnified by having his eldest son (Peter Roth) in a mental institution. Each time Kalle visits him, he is hauled out of the room for ranting against the boy's obsession with poetry. When he shares his plight with a clergyman in a church, the man of God shows little interest and then talks about his own difficulty selling his house.

Swedish writer and director Roy Andersson has concocted a surrealistic drama about a society in tragic collapse. All the civilized values and virtues that have held things in place are gone. People only look out for themselves, and common courtesies have vanished. In one scene a crowd gawks at a man lying on a train platform with his hand caught in the door. The consensus of those witnessing his pain is that he must surely have been very clumsy to have gotten himself in such a ridiculous situation.

Shortly afterwards, Kalle is visited by a man who loaned him some money and then committed suicide. The fellow is back from the grave to haunt him, along with a boy who was hanged by the Germans during World War II. Meanwhile, Kalle connects with an entrepreneur who believes that the catastrophe of the times will lead to a resurgence of interest in crucifixes. While he is listening to his spiel, one Jesus comes undone and swings back and forth on one arm. Of course, the salesman fails in his goal and is later seen dispensing with all the crucifixs at the dump. "How can you make money with a crucified loser?" he says.

Near the end of this macabre drama (only recommended for the very serious filmgoer), some corporate bigwigs decide that the way to save themselves is to sacrifice a child — which they do in an elaborate and chilling scene. The final vignette revolves around the birthday celebration held for a 100-year-old general (Hasse Soderholm) who is kept in a crib. The frail and uncomfortable old man extends his best wishes to Hermann Goring.

This Swedish film opens with a quotation from the early 20th century Peruvian Communist poet Cesar Vallejo: "Beloved be the one who sits down." It is repeated throughout the film and could be used as a mantra for inveterate movie-goers.