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".
看之前就听说“这部电影本应由中国人先拍出来”，看完之后觉得此言非虚。从清末民初面临的巨大历史哀痛，到现在的中美之争，我们才是最应该拥有这种文化反省与思考的。
开头一种思悼的感觉，昌大去做官那段拍得有点垮，前面很好，两个人做鱼谱太好玩了
电影在做到剧情好看，又能传递文化思想，不局限于某一价值观的强制教育，难能可贵。丁若铨一句“性理学和洋学问并不是相冲的，是要一起前行的朋友”，大有包容之意，不管韩国目前政治与大众如何，只说这部电影，导演借古表达出自己十分通彻的想法。继承与吸收，兼容并包，有容乃大，这些我们常说的话，现实却已被狭隘的民族（cui）主义潜移默化侵蚀……
导演反思的历史传统，丁若铨和昌大败下阵来心灰意冷的那个体系，并非被全然摒弃了。正如最后的“白鹤黑山”之喻，影片给出关于传统的答案不是贬抑而是追问，关于人应该怎么面对一个庞大的文化，又怎么重新确立自我。这真是东方极了。
仿佛看到在海南儋州的苏轼/魟鱼要走的路只有魟鱼知道 鳐鱼要走的路只有鳐鱼知道 20210713重看
士大夫的追求，一边是礼失求诸野，一边是林奈分类法。
黑白片是很险的一步棋，稍有不慎，则陷入困顿及乏味。韩国电影那可太知道这些技巧了，果不其然，其实故事非常轻快，人物关系简洁明了。想了想，其实过去压根没怎么看过关于古代的东方电影，真是长见识。渔村的小镇做题家与他的两个爸爸，太阳底下真是没有新鲜事。
当然，在一个一天到晚都赢麻了、YYDS、实在是绝绝子的国家里面，有些人的确只能至死不变。
如果这个故事是真的，那么朝鲜的丁若铨就是比中国的睁眼看世界第一人还要超前数十年。想不到那个时代的朝鲜小小的渔村竟有这样一个包容济世的伟人，想不到韩国人的电影这么有国学韵味与哲理。
22-011. 前半部分真的不錯，雖然是黑白片但內容一點不無聊，可以看出來導演在構圖方面真的下了功夫。最後三分之一処劇情有點崩了，其實可以增加一點弟子和老師政見不合的鋪墊和細節，這樣弟子最後的轉變才不顯得那麼突兀。 男主一顆赤子之心，想學以致用報效祖國，沒想到宦海浮沉，多少黑吃黑的內幕，苛捐雜稅繁重到令人難以置信。好歹他還能有退路再回玆山，那些百姓呢？唉……苛政猛於虎啊！儒家最後成了統治中國最重要的思想武器，很大一部分原因在於儒家傳達的觀念是非常符合社會發展的。取之於民用之於民，水能載舟，亦能覆舟。 就像V里説的，政府應該怕人民，人民不應該怕政府。
读书改变不了贱民的黑白，至少可以自己看到彩色的参差多态；躲不开《牧民心书》，至少可以写《兹山鱼谱》。前半段以文字对抗既定框架的立意极好，维特根斯坦点赞，进士生活的片段略平。只可惜拥有李白、苏轼的你我却拍不出这样的电影～
读书明理究竟好不好？如果只是把读书当做人生进阶的手段好不好？如果读那么多书却换来看到世界更真实的残忍还要不要读？——读书，认识这个世界，了解世界上的人以及人性，在通晓了真相以后再内心积极的活下去是件很艰难的事，但是倘若你不读书又怎能有机会去翻开这个世界的书页。
若不能按照所学生活，便得按照自己的性格生活。
4.5。虽然中后不免一些韩式煽情刻意的地方，不过故事还是很动人的，也确实适合黑白摄影。
剧情无感，说教就更没意思。卞约汉水下那一段最好看。
人之有限事之无奈，贬谪不可归，苛政猛于虎。唯春花秋月山水苍翠大海无言。
电影蛮好的，但是说有多么多么牛逼倒是没觉得，艺术性一般，内容上不错，但也称不上世界顶级，还是更喜欢刺客聂隐娘那种装逼片
失意者之书。被剥夺的世界也有别样之美。不过整体情节也好视听也好似乎都有点寡淡。隐逸是不成出路的出路。美化的风景，滑稽的民众描写，削弱了隐逸者的负担，也一并削弱了身远朝廷心系百姓的志气。昌大这个人物入士到出世也相当流于表面（明说就是编剧意淫，起承转合处处生硬）。实学固然重要，令主角在当时历史条件下，说期待一个人人平等的无王的社会未免太ooc了吧。
近现代化转型痛苦下的传统士大夫写照，听到这些诗、经，如此亲切；避开日益空谈的大学之道，趋向自然趋向宇宙奥秘，一个将流放生活也过得乐在其中，乐以忘忧的贤者，这些符合中国审美旨趣的影像，却被韩国电影表现的自然、通透，毫不造作。
《东亚公务员现形记》，人上人的扭曲与麻木，仕途既要吃人也要自蚀，儒学与现代性的冲击立意很好，就是拍的做作了点，剧情基本上都在摆造型，不自然，也就少了鞭辟入里的力道。
Copyright © 2015-2023 All Rights Reserved
