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".
孩童视角的叙事，时代动荡，街区暴乱，家庭纷争，在大的阴暗混乱的背景之下，自取一丝小的温情回忆。与亲人的温暖相处，与同学的懵懂情谊，连同剧院里的色彩，共同构筑他的童年。不由得会联想到《罗马》，虽多一丝匠气，但依旧很喜欢。（2022.02.18）
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。
For the ones who stayed, for the ones who left, and for all the ones who were lost.
回家之后就要挑一些 PG-13 的电影和爸妈一起看，看之前先去 IMDb 查 Parental Guide。这部电影总体比较私人化，奏鸣曲其中的一小段喜怒爱乐变奏旋律。有几处仰拍、特写给影片添加了一些滑稽感，但感觉场景的编排和剪辑仍然比较随意。
看完感觉听辨爱尔兰口音的能力变强了。影片由多组日常生活片段构成，又不乏对北爱尔兰新教与天主教冲突的历史背景勾画，暴力与混乱被孩童的视角柔和，依赖门窗街巷自然形成的框架进行构图，体现对立与和解的关系。互文性作为点缀，将发生在他处的文化和故事穿插其中，比如电影中出现的几部电影、奶奶幻想中的香格里拉（还提到了《消失的地平线》）、小男孩看的阿加莎克里斯蒂等。有几处很动人的瞬间，最喜欢的是母亲气急败坏地拉着儿子把趁乱抢来的洗衣粉（？）送回商店，却恰巧被劫为人质的桥段，每一个转折都很精准。
Aye! 和Nancy在garden theater看的！没有字幕好多听不太懂😅但是还是很好看！| 电影院看见了预告片感觉很棒 竟然是北爱尔兰故事 本精神北爱尔兰人不会错过的...
乡愁系电影，从阿方索·卡隆到肯尼思·布拉纳，从墨西哥城到贝尔法斯特，每位导演心底都有一封写给故乡城市的温柔情书。拨开北爱尔兰历史往事，回溯童年时光，围墙后搭建起的简易片场还原出故乡街区的模样，用极其碎片化的生活日常呈现那段动荡年代里仍未褪色的私人记忆。小男孩眼中的世界，因宗教信仰分歧产生的冲突、亲情和初恋、迁离的人与留守的人，布拉纳爵士或许倾注了足够真切的情感，但作为导演功力实在有限，愣是把自传性质的回忆录拍成了温吞无比的家庭琐事，充斥着快要溢出屏幕的匠气，只能靠不时点缀些迷影元素和密集插入歌曲去勉强撑起零散到几乎没有的剧情。东施效颦，高下立判，刻意作旧的黑白影像和开场那段暴乱戏明眼人都能看出在模仿谁，可惜格局跟力道皆远弱于《罗马》，骗奖之心昭然若揭，这居然是今年颁奖季BP头号热门 - -！
不知道说啥，这节奏感不咋地，也毫无诗意。不过我觉得肯定有一大堆因为黑白就给高分的
属于那种没有多大野心，只是轻巧的讲述一场特定历史背景下的无奈离乡的小片。没有过度渲染悲伤和离别，欢乐生活还是占主调。片尾的音乐和歌声终于对了味儿，巴士离开街角后还是会让人陷入失落。
充满了许多导演儿时的私人回忆，但这些导演令自我感动的情节实在是难以打动并非处于那个时代和国家的观众。但话又说回来了，讲述童年回忆的《罗马》同样是私人的，为什么卡隆的《罗马》反而更能激起异地观众的共鸣与同情？因为卡隆选择将镜头更加聚焦于一个人物：是一个看似脆弱但又内心坚强的女性。这样的形象以及发生在她身上的不幸遭遇、导演注入的真诚情感，在高超的视听技法衬托下的结果自然是极其讨喜的。但再反观《贝尔法斯特》，过于刻意的镜头设计反而会显得投机取巧。以及在人物情感的塑造上，也没有《罗马》做得如此令人印象深刻。
我和你奶奶结婚了50年，她说的一个字我都没听懂。如果一个人没听懂你在说什么，把他一定是没在听。那个小女孩可以是虔诚的印度教徒，或者是南方浸信会教徒，又或者是反基督的素食主义者，只要她善良又正直，你们两个互相尊重，我们随时都欢迎她和她的家人来我们家。电影本身各方面主旨都点到为止，查不到贝尔法斯特宗教游行的历史，但电影本身想传达的可能就是宗教使人分裂，也使人向往自由以及爱可以超越宗教。
摄影布景服装表演都相当精致的一部电影，在限定的一个狭小街区里，从小男孩的视角，表现了在爱尔兰那个宗教冲突严重的时代下，留下的、离开的、彷徨迷茫的贝尔法斯特居民们的生活状态。
Go. Go now. Don't look back. I love you, son.
属于那种没有多大野心，只是轻巧的讲述一场特定历史背景下的无奈离乡的小片。没有过度渲染悲伤和离别，欢乐生活还是占主调。片尾的音乐和歌声终于对了味儿，巴士离开街角后还是会让人陷入失落。
个人较为无感的状态之一源于我本就没有归属的漂泊，但严格来说剧情的设置也撑不起离开和留下这所有选择的症结，另外演技真的就一般，观看后的记忆点竟都是配角
导演功力不够，以孩童视角看战争、动乱对生活的影响，成功的影片很多，这部的情绪传达以及童心和现实的对抗融合做得很一般了。拍成黑白的用意过于私人。
致留下的，致远游的，致迷失的，致敬回不去的
导演的童年回忆改编 60年代宗教信仰导致北爱尔兰内乱 有人留守 有人离开 走上不同的人生道路 有罗马的影子 也是黑白电影 剧情太平淡了 冲突也不够激烈 并没有觉得时代变化对小人物产生了影响 而且用小孩子的视角看上去 更显得没有事件感和年代感 总之 我不喜欢 看得昏昏欲睡
做作，溢于言表的做作；明明是标榜私人的回忆，却非要不自觉把故事丢进大历史中并试图扩大，从而获得一种参与历史的虚荣，又何必呢？外加做作的影像和音响。只能说是看了卡隆的电影就觉得“我也行了”，肯尼思·布拉纳大概是好莱坞最人缘好也最自恋的导演了。
每年都有这么一两部使用黑白色彩的，每一帧都是美好的画面，海报让我想起了布列松。黑白灰度的质感，真的适合童年的回忆，一个艺术家可以用艺术的手段去回忆自己的童年，
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