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".
比《罗马》差了三个《爸妈不在家》，摄影太棒棒了。
动乱不安却干净和谐的街道，负债累累却整洁温馨的家庭，一切都套上了虚假的滤镜，过度浪漫化的童年，过度美化的历史背景，让真实的痛苦现实反而呈现出一种“为赋新词强说愁”的疏离感。在动荡时代中挣扎的小小个体不得不做出背井离乡的选择，这一深刻主题却被似有似无的乡愁消解殆尽。全片充满了小乔尔布亚式的自我陶醉和不食人间烟火的自我欣赏，把工薪阶层底层家庭拍成如此资产阶级富贵之家，我不能理解。
有亲人不一定有亲情，同理，出生地也不是都能成为打心眼里深爱的故乡——只有深爱故乡的人才能拍出这样的电影来
Kenneth Branagh还是适合莎翁和阿婆。
不知道为什么很多人会不喜欢，私以为这是今年最有可能拿到奥斯卡最佳影片的作品。作者拍出了一个平实朴素的故乡，各种角色都非常鲜活，小男孩的甜美纯真可爱让人仿佛见到了童年的玩伴，爷爷教孙子去追女孩也让人忍俊不禁。而且台词动人且节奏非常好。不知道为什么大家要去和《罗马》比，导演的经历和路数本来就不一样，为什么拍黑白的故乡就要拿来比较呢？怎么不和《八月》比？不和《伊万的童年》比？我觉得比较的对象应该是和肯洛奇的《男孩与鹰》以及《这就是英格兰》这样的作品。依旧是英国工薪阶层对童年和故乡的挽歌。不足之处是有些地方音乐铺太满，而且最后的升华也有些刻意了，但映射到现实中的乌俄冲突之下，也许可以坐等拿奖。
想起狗脸的岁月和昇哥的《美好的哲学课》
it's actually a bit hard to understand the lines with the accent.. but still such an interesting angle... and it's amazing that some childhood memories seems never fading even after a long time. a powerful work with many heartwarming moments that still resonates with me after the movie. well, TIFF does have taste. ps. it's strange some historic events look so absurd now but at the time..
黑白格调，有历史感的同时不失唯美，儿童视角，动乱冲突依然看到儿时的快乐和对故乡的留恋。似乎也就能想到这些，还有就是英式英语吧（大概）。7/10分
非常勉强的及格。100分钟的电影几次无聊到暂停。又是老电影串烧，又是金曲串烧，还有雷神漫画，还到处念诗。看不到什么情怀，只有一股逮着往里塞的感觉。和《罗马》比实在是有点碰瓷，感觉更可以相比的是德尼罗的那部《布朗克斯故事》，可惜比起那部也是远远不如，一堆莫名其妙的构图和节奏奇葩的剪辑。不过里面确实有一些挺触动我的地方，不至于让我太厌恶。
1960年代末，动荡时期，从一个贝尔法斯特长大的男孩的角度讲述的童年故事。
BGM相当不错，一首接一首的，让我这似曾相识的半吊子一直在搜歌，朱迪丹奇饰演的奶奶结尾的台词让人感动，仿佛好生活永远在别处，但可是别处为啥总是那么几个地方呢......试问谁不想在故土之上欣然久住，可是总有一些十足的畜生打着非常好听的名号在破坏最基础的根基，满足他们称霸世界却包装成复兴荣光的狼子野心，这或许才是好生活不能得行的原因。
分了几次看完，受限于过于地缘化的时代背景，完全同kb共情诚然是不太可能，但结尾处关于流亡和放逐的阐释，在这个特殊的疫情时期，反而与现实达成了一种跨时空的呼应。btw，虽然立意对标罗马，kb也有意在视听方面大做文章，但画面质感还是太类型片。
和爱尔兰出身的英国朋友一起去看的，故事的情绪很私人，我完全体会不到，顺便问了朋友许多爱尔兰历史。
倒是没有非得做成黑白的必要...彩色更适合这种家庭喜剧的风格
私人乡愁故事。go, go now, don't look back, I love you
不同于此类电影大部分都会仅仅对过去年代的简单回味思念，电影从头到尾都贯穿着周遭的不稳定以及恐慌，其实是很真实的。有人选择离开有人选择留下，也有更多没有选择的权利，“爱尔兰人大多是移民的”听的让人感同身受而又bittersweet。（如果觉得这个电影“仅仅是从北爱去英格兰而已而很无病呻吟”的话建议可以看一下北爱近几十年的历史背景以及为什么很多人选择了离开）
50-60s导演思绪回潮将创造精力聚焦在私人回忆，和《罗马》之间再差几个《罗马》，怎么说，buddy还真的像是60年代的孩子（in every way
能不能别套那么多公式啊😅
看哭了。在国外这么多年其实没怎么想过家，甚至有点怀疑自己是不是没有良心。但贝尔法斯特让我怀念起童年生活，不管时代背景下在发生什么，或者父母家长邻里之间在发生什么，小孩子的忧虑只有那么点大。爷爷很让人心疼，在战乱年代保持一颗诙谐的心是一种超能力。
这部电影，个人觉得还是很文艺很文艺的。
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