Plot Summary

The film comprises three cinematic novellas: (1) “And They Arrived at the Peasant’s Hut… or the Adventures of Writer Senya in Search of the Hidden Word,” in which writer Senya draws inspiration for his rural novels from his housekeeper Yermolayevna’s tales; (2) “The Song, or How the Great Louarsab Organized a Choir,” where a city visitor attempts to form a choir of centenarian elders in a Georgian mountain village; (3) “What Is Our Life?! or What Is Our Life?!”—during a musical reenactment of pre-Revolutionary France, a drunken actor’s tardiness forces King Louis XIV (also the theater committee chairman) and the cast to improvise the play’s ending.