A young man wanders through the ruins of what may or may not be his childhood home, where each crumbling doorway opens up onto the past. Memories accost him-memories of his school days, of loved ones long gone, of wonder, callousness, and defeat. The painful invasion gives rise to a series reflections on the limits of cinema and the poverty, and inescapability, of the life of the mind. No matter how much he has tried to change, the young man-who may or may not be the filmmaker himself-always returns to the same places, same questions, same faces, same recollections-the same nails in his brain.