As the camera pores over 92 mixed media pictures hung in a gallery (all painted exquisitely by Greenaway himself), a pedantic narrator describes his mysterious journey to H, using the pictures as maps. Subtitled The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist, this film seems to be concerned with the migration of a soul (to Heaven or Hell) following the migratory paths of birds (which feature prominently) - but along the way it takes in the curious provenance and intrepretation of each painting, and it documents a bewildering intrigue between the narrator, his mentor Tulse Luper and his rival van Heuten (keeper of the owls at the Amsterdam Zoo).