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The story is set on the Asiago plateau in the space of one single snowy night and depicts the physical and emotional torment of Italian soldiers in the trenches.
The soldiers are scruffy men, who have to sleep on boards in the freezing cold, and are burrowed in an outpost buried in snow. There, they confront their loneliness in the long idle moments of the war, trying to find some hope. The contrast between the darkly lit barrack - that portrays a condition of claustrophobic madness - and the vast white landscape is striking.
The peaceful scenery of the snowy mountains becomes a place of death after a major arrives and forces the captain and his men to follow a meaningless, suicidal order. They will die, and will be buried in the snow. They will stay there, hidden under the snow, until the arrival of spring, the moment in which greenery will bloom again.