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".
叹人生，最难欢聚易离别。颠沛流离起起落落的一辈子，小人物也有自己的金榜题名，洞房花烛，他乡遇故知。
看得身心煎熬，太压抑了，强奸戏还硬生生看了两遍。最后一幕，从Marguerite的视角缓缓展开，可以看到她的痛苦和绝望，中间有一段她独自在庄园里工作是全片唯一的亮色，其余都是极度沉重阴暗的色调，在父亲眼里她是交易筹码，在丈夫眼里她是生育工具，在点头之交的男性眼里她是可以随意侵占的猎物。质询戏实在太窒息了，每个人都在质疑她说话的真实性，真相显得苍白无力。最后的决斗戏非常惊心动魄，视觉上来说这场打戏拍得非常好，心理上就在为Marguerite担心，两个男人的对决只是一种权利上的宣示，并无关乎她受害的真相，然而如果输了她却要遭受被焚烧的命运。最后她丈夫获得了胜利也赢得了万众的欢呼和拥戴，却没有人会再去关注真相是什么。Jodie Comer演得超级棒，给个提名吧！
影片用长达数十年的时间跨度，呈现出了人类历史的重复性和相似性，之后又将这种沉重感变化成了“白驹过隙”的轻盈，似是一声哀婉叹息，但这声叹息却长达半个世纪之久，才得以被我们听见。
A new old play 非常不错，拍摄手法和画面都很棒，全剧四川话也让我感觉十分亲切。每一个转折点都是一首判词来揭晓，新又新。很久没看华语片了，很惊喜。唯一觉得不足的是，太长了。
最令人窒息的是贵瓣评论区居然有人觉得马达演的角色是好男人
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
光怪陆离，出来恍惚到手机没拿稳，把屏摔了。
🐶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！
在纽约看的大银幕，之前铺垫有点冗长，中后段渐入佳境
实大失所望，经典女性题材电影，跟热点赚尽口碑，罗生门式的叙述女闺蜜的告密岳母的自白和恶心中世纪法庭的宗教审问更是惊起一片巨涛，但在盛行宫廷之爱的中世纪政治婚姻的冷漠其实不论男女都心知肚明，谁又不是互相利用和相互附庸，作为战争资源为最价值的冷兵器时代自然是男性权利的鼎盛，但女主最大原罪绝不是性别而是没有强硬家族后台反之男性也可能没权利，这便是本片致命漏洞偷梁换柱，只是以中古之名行输出意识形态之实并没有深入到时代问题还不如老实拍个现代题材，本以为还会深入探讨人性但都戛然而止实令人遗憾，且角色太过脸谱根本没啥深挖价值，亚当本在星战时就觉难堪大任，结果本片还是万人迷故作忧郁的演技更是令人不快，虽雷的服道化依然精彩，但尤其片尾夫死妇荣的挑拨之词真是其心可诛，假意奉迎也不过是利用话题消费女性利己而已。
导演的美术出身实在是为电影奠定了强烈的美学风格。表演、服化、布景采用贴近戏班戏台演出，形成了奇妙的戏中戏
大自然中一切讲究生物的平衡，而《鬼灭之刃》正是采用了这一法则。在剧情中除了九柱逐个阵亡之外，作者还将画笔转向了主角炭治郎，使其变为了即鬼舞辻无惨之后新任的鬼王，在人类牺牲巨大代价之后将大家心心向往的主角进行转变
这些个骑士老爷真够好笑的，在他们决斗结束后不到半个世纪，最著名的法国农妇圣女贞德带领法国人击败了英格兰。雷爷还是太英国了，女性主义议题的表达在形式和内容上都有些保守。《罗生门》式多视角叙事形式固然颇有讽刺效果，但过于工整，看第一个视角我就预料到编剧会在哪些地方呈现不同的叙事细节。内容上非常正确，主题表达也非常直白，只能说无功无过，和欧陆导演范霍文的《圣母》相比，缺乏更丰富的阐释和理解维度，思辨深度也远远不及后者。文本层面整体表现放在雷爷强大的电影作品序列里不算突出。但雷爷的影像品质依然顶级，吊打现在绝大多数好莱坞电影。真的太爱看雷爷拍古装片了，视听层面每一帧都是享受，期待老头子拍的拿破仑电影。
无论谁的一生拉长看都是悲剧，在这片土地上就更显荒诞了。文本上没太多意外的地方，倒是形式与风格令人惊喜，依赖视觉美学、剧场感和人物表演形成的间离体系。
昨天在影院看完，三个视角 故事情节层层铺垫，并在最后一章达到高潮，历史书没有给勇敢的玛格丽特发声的机会，人们只会为决斗胜利的男性欢呼 却不会关心真正受到伤害的女性。在这里我们可以看到一位善良 可爱 勇敢的女性，为玛格丽特鼓掌👏🏻
决斗戏份因为此前全部的情绪铺垫和积压，两男人对打的时候看得人血脉膨胀，感觉自己就像在现场！
震惊于这样一部艺术的作品，却毫不枯燥。3个小时把人按在座椅上，看着新又新的剧团几十年流过眼前，微小与宏大呈现出异常的真实。
人生的含义是什么，是奋斗。奋斗的动力是什么，是成功。
2022/01/25 hxwy
86/100 应是2020s年代前五的华语片水平。属于邱炯炯的《电影史》：从二三十年代默片（居然想到《将军号》）到革命样板戏…再到各种后现代的拼接，在手工影棚（美学风格部分离不开业内又非职业人员组成的工作坊的生产方式）里穿越大半个20世纪中国，同时电影又是借由肖像（个体）与空间（大环境）来穿越历史。电影在现实与梦境、生与死间跳转，人物在政治和艺术之间周旋，新的生发于旧的，旧的又因各种原因深埋于新事物之中，某一瞬间，才意识到封建时代的幽魂从未完全散去（像那个黄面蜡像）。一个核心张力在于，社会中所有新的变化，最终都多多少少在处理与过去的某种关系。喜欢合照那段似乎总是置身事外的坨儿对camera的“接管”——一段取景器内的黑白段落，提醒着观众面对历史的更换要始终保持警醒，这也是艺术间离的成功体现。
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