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".
The first part in B/W could be seen as a journey to bid his brother a moving adieu by transporting the ashes of Pirandello, whose works have been adapted by the brothers, to his Sicilian homeland. Whereas the second part in color is quite confusing for us who have never read the story before. The shift from grey to color is poetic though
伟大作家去世褪色，身体化作尘埃散去，但其完成和未完成的作品光鲜亮丽的延续下去，导演以此纪念去世的哥哥。
以皮兰德娄的身后骨灰为始发点，巨大的争议与巨大的荣耀都曾聚焦于这位作家身上，回溯那“恐怖、野蛮、挣扎的十年”，藉由魂归大海而达成漫长的告别；未完成的告别则不仅是皮兰德娄遗作——《钉子》化为影片第二部分，更是“To my brother”——保罗·塔维亚尼对哥哥的纪念，两部分的捏合通过一位作家和黑白/彩色的切换达到转承。
很老派的影像和处理方式，也很私人化的故事。但一定要拍出这个故事的心是电影最令人动容之处。
4。结构性叙述。昨日，今天，明天。各种符号，归来去兮，告别与怀念
大师们的暮年竟是如此相似，充满了痛苦与荣耀。让孩子们在电影里迅速长大，时间的流逝似乎不值得一提。生前的功与名，死后却是一边被人纪念一边被人遗忘。在西西里岛的巨石旁，在广阔的海天之间，在简易的坟墓前，最终只有安详。
巨型狗和人的相处，就喜欢看这种反差，全程欢乐搞笑又冒险刺激
其实观众对亚瑟王和他继承者的故事没关系，没看过他们的民间诗歌也没关系。有隐喻也不是问题，但通篇密不透风都是隐喻，半点出气口都不留就是个问题。其实...通篇都是隐喻也能拍得很好，这就要看导演的功力了，动如《黑客帝国》静如《少年派的奇幻漂流》都是通篇隐喻，就撑得起来。总而言之，没金刚钻别揽瓷器活。
想到风很大的Agrigento，一边是温馨的家庭屋内对话，一边是路灯都在晃的恐怖片场景。那是离Piradello最近的时刻。
大卫·洛维有着一种低配版本的时间—影像，在一些时刻，通过场面调度令未来渗入此在，特别是在高文被劫后，在摄影机的一个环形运动之中死亡，重生，如此调度令人想起沟口健二，以及洛维上上部以时间的凝缩作为主题的“鬼故事”。自《绿》的第一个镜头起，洛维希望呈现一部严肃的史诗致敬影史上的万神殿，却又无法逃脱A24的视觉奇观——我们可以相信一些游戏式的镜头绝非他的本意。
光影音画均很出彩，可惜邪气不够，说教意味过浓，中间几乎拍成了聊斋。将时间无限拉长，又穿越几层空间，居然没有展现出多少延展度。对失落的古典道德的探讨具有多少警醒意味则全看这中间有多少文化隔阂，个人比较喜欢结尾，向死而生也好，死亡既是归途也罢，都是对自我的接受与必然。
实在是喜欢不起来chapter类的叙事方式，片子本身对chapter和title card的运用让我感觉是减分的。故事里的时间概念仿佛笑话，并不能让我觉得是导演高超的操控，更像是失重的类比，突然拉长或者压缩，到最后更是十分钟的回顾前世今生。稍微有点失望
长诗转电影，兜转了那么久终究要谈最重要的承认问题，这当然能让人摆脱有死，但这里真正达成这重境界终究还是原著，而古董寓言的成长故事一经展开，确实是天生现实又自带浪漫，也貌似只有在这样的维度上，才能古典。
标准的儿童电影，可可爱爱的，社区里的人也都很温暖可爱，治愈电影
有种朱拉亚库比斯克的感觉，想到了《吸血女伯爵》有喜欢的地方，摄影不错，还有华丽的运镜。故事呈现的也挺好
很重的土腥味和书卷气。神秘不足、符号过多，如果能延续开篇几十秒的火焰…整个电影都会燃烧起来！鬼魅浮生是导演偶得佳作么？！
原以为是商业片，但是没想到遭遇了这种中世纪舒缓叙事（坑爹的预告骗#%）
我很喜欢讲述人类和狗狗感情的电影，虽然剧情俗套可是感情在
很爱，我就是爱儿童片咋了嘛，我寻思三到五岁也不一定看的懂吧，明明立意很好啊，有的人看不惯别人与众不同。
特别拧巴的一部电影。Lowery为了让当代观众理解角色，把Sir Gawain the virtuous的journey of chivalry改编成coming of age故事。改编很难说成功。一面极力撇清传统saga和coming of age叙事不惜穿插荒诞讽刺，一面不得不忠于原著情节用神秘主义风格把saga情节糊弄过去。最终coming of age变成了一条直到最后一幕通过颅内simulation才能完成的陡峭曲线，路上的道德挑战在乳臭未干的小骑士身上也失去了在原著里与virtuous knight的张力。slow pan再好看也救不回来。
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