Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
然而这片明明是大本演法国国王查尔斯六世，马达演倒霉骑士，老司机演强奸犯，“爱在别人眼中找你”啥的。
多有趣，维伦纽瓦拿着未来拍出历史和过去，雷老爷子拿着过去拍出现在和未来。依然可见，有些事情就算过去了一千年一万年，人类的言行亘古不变。
今晚要点一杯marguerite🥂
有声默片，很多场景十分梅里埃。也是近几年华语新片里少有的没有哪个角色/演员让我感到尴尬的，可能是方言、戏剧感对夸张表演的宽容度比较高。
非常好看！的确是a new old play as in 描写的这一段近代史都是已经很熟悉的内容（still每次都会感叹好苦啊）但是新的效果特别好，3小时也不觉得长/闷，“舞台”但不死板，很活
#BIFF2021 电影时长三小时，个人对这种叙事很宏伟的电影不太感冒，但有几个镜头如剧照一般的确很惊艳
比起戳破强奸犯的谎言，这个片子更精彩的部分是戳破丈夫的谎言。嘲讽拉满，特别悲凉的地方又特别好笑。女主演得太好了！
有一些有意思的片段，但导演想表达得太多或者什么都不想表达，像是学生作业一样讨好老师以满足某一套对中国电影历史和文化的期待。有技巧和想法，但没有个性。
独树一帜、自成一家的美学体系，横卷展开的历史传奇、家族往事，体量丰富，形式突出，在日趋严苛的审查之外，丛生出丰沛、蓬勃的创作风景。它延续了《霸王别姬》的历史沧桑，以时代命运同构着夹缝中求生存的戏曲艺术的起落，兼有《活着》的平民史诗和冷静控诉，目之所及，一部再难以超越的华语电影伟作。
这好像是一部作为四川人无法客观评价的一部电影。坐在没有空调的闷热影厅里，湿气热浪把我钉在座位上，又把我投掷回遥远的盆地故乡。我日渐退化的四川话使得我甚至需要阅读英文字幕才能看明白好些台词。我在夹缝里，是物理空间上的远离，也是文化意义上的流浪。川剧，乡音，麻将，稀饭，一切的一切，都在我此刻的人生中逐渐退潮，想抓也抓不住。电影的人造布景把整场戏推得很前面，画着白脸的邱福和一众角色，在干冰和白布拟作的水浪里上下漂浮，左右横移，荒腔走板地上演着阴阳两界的种种故事，真的，假的，模模糊糊，辨识不清，我坐在台下，却怎么也不能忘记，我已经不在那里了。
看之前除了知道是雷导作品之外一无所知，看完之后真的非常惊喜。雷导再加“本马达”编剧真就是质量保证。好一出借古讽今。一个男人声称爱上了一个和他同样爱好文学的人（且深信对方也爱自己），然而他找到她之后的第一件事却只是脱掉裤子强奸她（而且还秒射…fxxking kidding me？）；甚至他到临死前都还对上帝发誓那是两情相悦而非强奸。然而其他的男人甚至女人甚至整个社会都和他并没有什么本质的不同，虚伪而冷漠。
🐶小日子渗透到我们南京大屠杀纪念馆了快恐怖恐怖退！ 退！ 退！
最后的决斗不是为女性的尊严战斗，只是为了男性的财产所有权和荣誉战斗。三个不同视角都没有废话，两个半小时的片长很值得。Jodie的戏太好了，其实台词没多少，这双眼睛太会演了。Ridley Scott 确实不会令我失望。
绝对五星，名副其实的华语年度最佳！荒诞的艺术，光怪陆离的社会变迁，《霸王别姬》的隔空对唱，模糊舞台和荧幕的扑面而来的丁达尔效应，极具个人色彩和地方特色的空灵的戏梦版的表达，文革时期向右野蛮生长的水泥砖墙，屎里找蛆的桥段。细节和记忆点很多，非常大胆，导演也极具野心。在釜山电影节看的，179分钟，中途走了几个韩国人，亮灯后也有几个韩国人昏睡在座位上，只有我和个位数的同胞在诺大的影厅里鼓掌到人潮散去
村上春树在《海边的卡夫卡》里说过：“暴风雨结束后，你不会记得自己是怎样活下来的，你甚至不确定暴风雨真的结束了。但有一件事是确定的，当你穿过了暴风雨，你早已不再是原来那个人。”
三个钟头过去了，
让人间有鬼气，让地府有生气。在哪都一样，怎么都接着过日子，几十年来尽如此，反而是种终极宽慰吧。
是对《痴》的全面升级，是一个完全生发自自己的艺术家电影，他有自己的密电码。
戏曲人半生的颠沛流离史，和半世纪的大历史气象相结合。虚景透着实景的意，却又限制在这勾栏瓦舍之内。四九年之前，中国的人文精神在山野云气之间，唱的是一个百转千回；四九年之后，符号随钢铁而来，文戏还需武唱。地上风云变幻，地下牛头马面接老汉儿的班。
法国中世纪版的《罗生门》（《英雄》亦同），制作精良的女性挽歌。核心即是直面与控诉“强暴不是对女人施加的罪行，而是侵害她男性监护人的财产”这一历史性的问题。与彼时而言，它有“历史的局限性”；与当下而言，它影射了这种“局限性”的延续与发展（更加隐形与多样化），女性的自由、地位与权利一直以来困境重重。在“门当户对”大旗之下的婚姻形态，其实是进行财富、权力等的合纵连横，阶级壁垒，凡来尘往，莫不如此。影片亦是一部生动鲜活的职场教科书。譬如在《肖申克的救赎》中的安迪，若是没有精湛的会计技术、情商爆表与坚韧的精神，估计撑不过一个月就得扑街。结尾让人想到了老司机曾对太祖说过的一句话：“胜利者是不受指责的，这是一般的公理。”在不公的困境中挣扎的她们，屡仆屡起，一次次爆发出呐喊与抗争，百折不挠，从未停止...
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