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".
约翰.福特的电影常常使用门框式构图，这部电影频频出现窗框式构图，黑白摄影很美甚至让人觉得摄影师已经陶醉在了自己的摄影中。有人说像罗马但是感觉上也有点博格丹诺维奇的最后一场电影的味道，当然不管是和罗马比还是和最后一场电影比，这部都只能算是一个小品了。片中片出现了很多经典电影，双虎屠龙，正午，对话中也提到了很多经典，罗宾七侠，消失的地平线，等等。塞伦.希德演的祖父相当好，躺在棺材里的画面一定是在致敬双虎屠龙。PS“我们爱尔兰人不怕颠沛流离，要不然全世界就不会有那么多酒吧了，哈哈哈。”
有一种很强的色彩，去留住记忆中的故乡的感觉。里面有家人，有大的时代环境，有悲欢离合……
3.黑白压抑，我还以为用黑白是有什么深意，但是感觉导演就是为了用黑白而用黑白，就是喜欢黑白，可能
黑白摄影很棒，演员很棒，致敬了很多经典电影，迷影情节很棒，可惜歌实在太多了，比歌舞片的歌还多，太简单太直白了，导演水平不够啊，可惜了。
“为什么你不去香格里拉，奶奶？” “因为贝尔法斯特没有通往香格里拉的路。”
讲故事的方式和故事本身都中规中矩，一部传统而温柔的电影，四星。然后：作为一个不停地搬家的，习惯背井离乡的人，时而不时地被各种细节打动，加半星。片尾朱迪丹奇的大特写额外再加半星。（这是一条纯粹出于独断和偏见的短评）
第一场拍街头的戏份就败好感，滥用镜头和剪辑的结果就是乱战只剩下「乱」。从中看不到任何作为导演存在的有效调度，走位混乱到捕捉不到任何镜头语言的美感。所以选择制成黑白电影同样也是这类问题。意义何在？纯粹为了所谓的追忆而凹出故作高级的质感？还有，请放过《罗马》。
有一种很强的色彩，去留住记忆中的故乡的感觉。里面有家人，有大的时代环境，有悲欢离合……
剧情略有点平，感觉是借着北爱冲突的大背景拍情感和人际关系，从叙事角度如果单独作为一部电影来看不是特别完整。
For the ones who stayed, for the ones who left, and for all the ones who were lost.
乞丐版「罗马」，罗马里的儿时街道和大家庭处处透露出“低头思故乡”的故土情结，而这部片的导演只对现在的荣华富贵和影片中出现的老电影感兴趣，整部片只有这些出现过彩色。
作为一个前不久刚读过《什么也别说》的人，我是能够理解导演在这样一个命题下所想要表达的一些东西的，也能够理解有一些问题现在仍不便提及。
导演说这是部“半自传体”，他以阿莫多瓦的《痛苦与荣耀》举例阐释了这种书写：虚构自传（auto fiction），在作品中明显涉及了一些创作者自身生活中真实发生的事件，但在保持这种由剧作、表演和布景等等构建起来的“真实可信”基础上，创作者仍进行了极有成效、富有活力和韵律的艺术加工处理，以确保进行个体叙事的影像所必需的日常真实感。或许因为北爱尔兰问题距离我们现在或在我们国家所得到的信息过于少因此在看的时候有很多迷惑，只看到虽有暴乱但故意以孩童眼光淡化这一事件，存住家庭的美好，最终欢闹的街道人去楼空，留下老奶奶独守故乡。故乡是游子无论何时都要装进行囊随身携带的底味，片中的buddy是导演童年的化身，年近半百的导演在疫情封锁期间回首往事。对近景镜头进行精雕细琢，大量对称构图和横向运镜、景深镜头使用。
Kenneth Branagh还是适合莎翁和阿婆。
A bottom-up approach to paint the conflict. In broad strokes, the story shows the things that matter to people: their relationship with neighbors, moral integrity, the class/financial struggle, romance untainted by arbitrary divisions. Peeling away structural intellectualizations, we're left with tender feelings for those who made difficult choices.
乡愁电影，和看《上帝之手》观感类似，记忆不相通，情绪不相容，整体来说没让我全然共情。
故事剧情有点普通，好喜欢爷爷奶奶的部分，最后一段太好哭了简直。一颗星给摄影，一直在猛截图
当奶奶正对着镜头呢喃："Go.Go now.Don't look back."一个孤独的老人在失去另一半后，依旧坚强告别剩下的家人。只留下自己一人头靠着门，带着无言的悲痛与不舍。这是布拉纳私人真情的回忆，是布拉纳自己的贝尔法斯特。致所有留下的，所有离开的，所有迷失的。
同时能明显感受到喜欢与不喜欢这电影的地方，故事很走心，这个原创故事很棒，是一本优秀的剧本使然。然而又能感到有目的性地过分炫技，太满当变得溢价。或是剧情转折快，有些东西立体了，有些又有点赶脚。但对于奥斯卡来说技巧多未必是坏事…（7.5分）
年度观影 No.507
Copyright © 2015-2023 All Rights Reserved
