Retired professor Serebryakov and his young wife Yeléna disrupt the lives of his brother-in-law Vanya and daughter Sofya on a rural estate, leading to a crisis of unrequited love, resentment, and disillusionment.

On the streets of the regional city, a cheerful holiday bustle reigns. The apartment of the Kupriyanovs is also noisy — friends of their youngest daughter Yulka are preparing for the New Year. The old driver Leonid Kupriyanov will not have to celebrate the holiday with his family, he should go on the next trip. Preparing for the New Year, none of the heroes imagined what dramatic events would fall on them, how difficult and unexpectedly the destinies of three families would intertwine, how difficult it would be to recover from their experiences ...

Set in the Soviet scientific community, the story follows two dedicated physicists whose close friendship unfolds amid dangerous nuclear research, shaped by their shared affection for a strong-willed woman. Radiation exposure, scientific ambition, and romantic rivalries intersect as the characters confront the physical risks of their work and the personal consequences of their choices.

Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations.