Everyone on this journey is a student of life. The futile quest and fruitless interrogation are paralleled by inane small talk among the various investigators as well as a series of fraught private conversations between the party’s two professionals—the glib prosecuting attorney and a self-effacing young doctor riding along as a witness to pronounce the corpse dead if found. Headlights illuminate the landscape and transform it into a near-empty stage. (As much as Once Upon a Time concerns the problems of deductive logic, it’s also a movie about the quality of the light.) Midway through, in a scene of uncanny loveliness and material visions, the group pulls into a remote village for a late-night meal at the headman’s house. The night has given birth to a dream. Later, with the sky beginning to lighten over a hill as bleak as Calvary, the searchers find that for which they have been searching (perhaps) and go about creating an official report complete with detailed descriptions and photographs of … what?

“There’s a reason for everything,” someone says unconvincingly, once back in the car. With the mission accomplished, in a somewhat farcical fashion, the film might have ended here. There is, however, a morning after. The corpse is brought back to town so that the doctor may perform an autopsy. The night of mystery is over. The evidence can now be pondered by the dawn’s dreary light. Procedure is followed. Still, however banal the daytime images, a metaphysical darkness remains—and even grows. Will the presumed widow identify the body? Can she? The autopsy begins, presenting more puzzling facts. Why is there dirt in the corpse’s lungs? What is dug up must again be buried.