Plot
In an unnamed, desolate and isolated small town in Hungary during a winter season in recent times, János Valuska, a young newspaper-delivery man, conducts a performance with drunken bar patrons about the total eclipse of the sun, which disturbs, then silences the animals. It finishes with the grand return of the warm sunlight.
János is devoted to his 'uncle' György Eszter, a composer and musicologist, who is like a father to him. György records his observations about the imperfection and compromise of the musical scale, as defined by Werckmeister. György proposes changes to the natural scale to make its harmonies more natural.
János goes to the post office to pick up his newspapers for delivery. The workers are unsettled by the ominous signs of the circus' arrival and the cloud that settles over each town it visits.
A "circus" built around a huge stuffed smelly whale and its star performer, "The Prince", who is never seen, come to town in the night. János sees them arrive and philosophizes about God and the whale.
György's estranged wife, Tünde, tries to leverage her political and social status by giving György a list of names to recruit for the "Clean Up the Town movement," with the blessing of the police chief, and demands that György become chairman of the movement, or else she will move back in with him that very evening. She sends her suitcase ahead of her with János. György's struggling cobbler brother, Uncle Lajos, takes the list and passes it on to the agitated crowd in the town square who are unhappy with the failing public services. János is accosted by a thug in front of the open truck housing the whale. Tünde sleeps with the drunk gun-toting police chief.
The presence of the whale and the "Prince" stir up the crowd. János overhears the circus master losing control of his faceless Prince, who speaks (in Slovak) through a translator of revolutions and ruins. The circus master is afraid of consequences and disowns him. The Prince, now free, inflames the mob who, holding clubs, march, then run into a hospital, drag inmates out of their beds and beat them. When the rioters finally find a helpless old naked patient, who is extremely emaciated, they withdraw silently.
After the riot, János comes across the diary of a rioter. It explains that the rioters did not know what they were angry with; so they were angry at everything. Then it recounts the mob's horrendous rape of two post-office girls. On his way home, he witnesses from a distance a meeting between Tünde and a military officer. They depart together on a military vehicle to reclaim the town, accompanied by soldiers and a tank.
János then comes across the body of Lajos, who was killed in the riot. János is told by Lajos's wife to leave for his own safety, as his name was on a list held by the rioters. János runs away on the railroad tracks but is intercepted by a helicopter. He finds himself committed to a mental institution with caged beds. When György visits him, János simply stares into the blank space and does not respond to György, who recounts to János what has happened since the riot. György has been evicted from their house but gets to live in a shed in the garden whilst his wife, Tünde, with her new status as a collaborator, now occupies the big house with the police chief. György tells János, in the ward, that, if he is released from the mental institution, they can live contentedly together in the shed with his piano. György also mentions that he has re-tuned the piano so that it is now like any other, a personal capitulation apparently abandoning any present hopes of reform. János just stares into the blank space.
The film ends with György walking through the town square and looking directly into the eye of the abandoned whale, then walking away and looking back at the now sad and disheveled whale and the “circus” destroyed by the rioters the night before. The whale's rotting carcass is slowly enveloped by the thickening fog.
