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".
中国其实这样的题材也是无数。反正韩国人拍也一样，抛开民族国家，都是东亚背景，这也是中华文化的反哺。我们还拍不出，是我们被主义搅的一片混乱。里面丁若全与其弟的通信，很有意思。一方面思考儒家文明的理想，对现实政治的监督和批判，而反复朗读的汉文，无不彰显儒家的信仰力量。二丁若全的鱼谱，又内含试图打通东西走向现代的启蒙之路。电影简单化的就是描绘官家，苛政猛于虎，酷吏加腐败，没有深入利弊。这点我们的大明王朝不比该片弱。
【2.5】比《思悼》稍微好一些，但也仅仅是强在选题层面。
这个电影的好不仅是技术性的，剧本在文学与商业间的平衡与圆熟，摄影的画意乃至衣冠士林生态的完整，更是东方精神性的，古代儒家士大夫的流迁生涯首次成为故事核心完整表现，有人类比苏东坡不过是挑个名人，儒耶之争更可追摹的其实是明代徐光启，儒学、实学与神学的交锋至今回响，21世纪梵蒂冈封圣仍映照在上海徐家汇天主堂前。另看到嘉庆字样才反应过来此时已是清代，大明衣冠再不复矣。
都是读书人，为功名为信仰还是为求知，却是大不同。行至水穷处，坐看云起时，看邻人反思，想到故里无数人把青春与精力不是耗费在筑墙上，就是耗费在破墙上，实在叫人叹息。
是写给知识分子共鸣的作品，关乎读书人 求道、出世入世，值得回味深思。薛景求的状态真的好
民脂民膏，尔俸尔禄；御民牧民，不过敲骨吸髓……不想分杯羹！
况吾与子渔樵于江渚之上，侣鱼虾而友麋鹿，驾一叶之扁舟，举匏樽以相属。寄蜉蝣于天地，渺沧海之一粟。
淡淡的讲述，看着很舒服，如同在海边吹着海风晒月光。
李导的史剧/时代剧真是错不了。心中李导是可以把韩国商业电影拍的最’美’的导演，也是少有可以把黑白拍的如此有味道的导演。
前闻贺卫方看韩影《辩护人》后大哭，窃哂之，今日是泣泣泣泣泣泣泣泣泣几至于号啕，是为一谶。
斑鳐鱼走的路斑鳐鱼知道，黄貂鱼走的路黄貂鱼知道，一个人要走什么路只有自己才会知道。7
娓娓道来的叙事，似曾相识的同感，卞约翰有惊艳的表现。人生如航，每一个人内心深处都有那个魂牵梦绕黑山，却不一定都会变成慈山，做人的过程太苦了，你将经历别人的经历，却不一定悟出一样的人生，那些人生来平等的同理，似乎在固化的世界里，永远抵不过官禄诱人的不恭，启蒙，是灵魂的安宁，浑噩，是漂泊的一生……
看的时候会想到苏轼，想到颜回，虽然更接近的是近代的有识之士吧。电影整体风格沉静，有文人气质的感觉
“益纵饮，与鱼蛮鸟夷为俦侣，不复以骄贵相加。”丁若镛如此描述兄长到了黑山之后的生活，就这一句，联想到“上可以陪玉皇大帝，下可以陪卑田院乞儿”的东坡先生;从志趣上实在太像，这部片子也将成为我今年看过的最好的东方式古典韵味。
漂亮的电影。这真的不是迪士尼的导演来拍的吗？
像编纂字典、故宫修文物甚至守灯塔，都是如此。
就。。。挺早期第五代的，稍微改改平移到咱这80年代，基本不会有啥违和感。
农民操作的是土地，官员操作的是农民（台词大意）。一语道尽皇权内涵。
洞悉上层腐朽倾心西学的遭贬大儒邂逅向往功名醉心理学的小渔夫，从两个方向说尽了一个体系的活力与困境。即席汉诗酬答的那段让中国观众分外感动。没想到韩国还能拍出这么纯粹的东亚文人电影，黑白摄影的海面和树影，有日本电影的动态而无日式建筑的拘谨，文人意趣则让人想起《孔夫子》那时候的中国电影，真心让人赞叹。要说不足，大概是两位主角之外的配角们都刻画得较为脸谱化，功能性过强。
完全没有重点的流水账 学术追求与阶级批判两条线都很散 丨帮凶这个词用得很对丨更不懂“大中华文化圈”的身份认同以及未得首发的慨叹，甚至是幽默
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