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".
如果不是因为不会英文，导致我得时时刻刻看着字幕的话，这其实是一部听觉部分胜过视觉部分的电影（镜头其实很棒），主要是黑白的镜头削弱了我视觉上的关注，而电影通过录影的形式，让我们可以听见孩子们的声音，我认为这是一部需要倾听的电影。
3.5 静谧不平静的生命波流。有着诗句窥私般温柔的表达和抚慰人心的字句。与很多现代美式作者一样，从城市影调的旋律变奏中汲取力量，身处、浸泡、融化进不经意的环境声场 (车流 海风)，由孩童的纯真直接调动起已然遗忘的曾用来抗争这个复杂世界的简单直觉，一种有着强大昭示的问题集合并汇聚了世间所有答案。米尔斯眼中的都市个体总是饱含甜蜜珍贵的真诚告解，镌刻着家庭Ta者言语于一体的印记，好似人群街口处失去而又寻得的欣慰与恍然。如同洛杉矶与纽约等每个对照相望的城市，去聆听新世代的未来憧憬，拥抱停留在二十世纪的情感记忆。它告诉我们书本的扉页在生活里不断复现，发送的讯息与声音的波段都共处同一频率，续写故事的冲动将由我们自己完成。观影途中一直期待最终转换成彩色的那一瞬间，可惜没有等来绽放，或许它早已停留在了过去。
坐飞机去荷兰的时候我很浮躁，只看得进猫和老鼠。坐飞机回来的时候心特别静，看了这个决定特别舒服，好看，看到演职员表都走完。觉得世界不是太难呆下去的地方了。
三星半，是部温馨可爱的片子，但对于经常跟不同孩子们打交道的人来说，还是属于大人写的关于孩子的片子，片子的对象也属于大人，有点过于浪漫化孩子青少年的世界了。不过对于新时代中产阶级如何育儿，大概还算有点启发和教育意义，哈哈。
必须5星，为对待孩子，们的态度。影片角度放这么低，完全令人吃惊。
这种片子才是真正的保守，只可惜我们国家的sb观众和没文化的影评人把一些不是保守的东西认为是保守。
Children are the parents of adults. 愿这个世界像这部电影一样温柔，永远枕在天真且真实的孩童的话语上入睡。中间关于motherhood和star child的选段朗读都是非常值得回味的。黑白色的整部电影，仿佛就是一本动态的填色本，让你思考该填充什么样的颜色。
- "No,I don't,you do. You're stupid."
生动自然的表演，我们一路追问，一路寻求答案，或许很多问题永远都不到正确回答，但问题本身已经是活着的意义了。
这个时代下，孩子成熟坚强得像个大人，大人们脆弱崩溃得像个孩子，孩子们对未来的世界充满了悲观与不确定，但仿佛已经做好了心理建设，大人们回首过去的种种痛苦，只会哑然一笑，明白这也是孩子们的必经之路。刻意的选择了美国东西南北四座代表性的城市后，最终我们还是一起在大自然中肆意放声呐喊。be funny, comma, when you can, period. （还有，很久不见非常非常赞的黑白摄影。）
补，喜欢在评论里看到的一句：这是一部能让人变得柔软的电影。
于是又重新把影片过了一遍
大量对话的平和片子。虽然是以孩童的视角切入，却觉得更像给大人看的。最后两人在树林中释放大喊的时候很感动。I am not fine and that is a totally reasonable response.
黑白加分不少，叔侄之间的沟通方式很迷人。当他们谈论未来时，成年人给予未成年抑或说长辈给予后辈的温柔，如此平凡却弥足珍贵。
温柔的华金，也穿匡威。我也觉得没必要用黑白，并无更突出的表意。
很温柔 细细述说地电影/如果有时间 就真诚跟little wired person 说说话吧 他真诚又热情又古怪/我们跟世界的关系 come on come on blah blah blah or cmon cmon 我来到世界很久 希望跟世界关系变好
3.5 原来是公路带娃片…跟城市掠影同步的是对儿童的理解、对将来之物的理解。（跟友邻开心面基了！感谢豆瓣！
"I'll remind you of everything."结尾这句话提醒了我父母的另一个角色，父母是孩子每一个时期的见证者，父母像储物柜，储藏了孩子那么多珍贵的回忆，在孩子长大后得以娓娓道来。不要用孩子的眼光看待孩子，也不要用大人的眼光看待孩子，孩子的思想同样深沉，同样细腻，孩子和大人思想的唯一区别大概是孩子不一定会记得，父母的作用在这里凸显出来。珍视孩子的每一个想法，它们并不幼稚，没有人永远是大人，也没有人永远是孩子。大人和孩子的界限真的那么清晰吗？
A24啊。四星半。Again，同Scenes from a marriage理，细水长流最考验表演，表演挺好。因为主题的原因，声音转场处理得都很好。The things you never wished for happens. So you just come on, come on, and come on.
虽然主人公总与小孩子打交道，但是被采访的小孩和自己带的孩子差别可不是一点半点，全篇主要也就是围绕这个主题在讲述，话筒外的真实人生。不难想象的剧情走势，孩子的天真治愈了复杂的成人，虽然很温柔，但片子过于注重文本了，导致温柔成为唯一记忆点，这就有些不太合适。纽约这个城市真的太奇妙了。
Copyright © 2015-2023 All Rights Reserved
