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".
那不勒斯少年的青春记忆，庞大臃杂的家族聚会。性感的小姨，神经质的姑妈，擅长恶作剧的妈妈，诙谐的老爸，消极的哥哥……充满激情，喧闹的生活。
满怀乡愁的影像回忆录，先不说别的摄影依然美到屏息。其实从少年成长的线路角度，从吵闹的平凡幸福到突发变故再到默然离乡，穿插足球、电影、胡思乱想和性启蒙，思路并不算出奇。与过往的回忆乃至伤痛坦诚相见，更打动人的是那一份真挚且沉静的情感。喜欢结尾的那首歌，开启耳机的降噪模式，那就是与世隔绝又汹涌澎湃的我。以及忽然有了一个奇怪的想法，都在类比费里尼和阿莫多瓦，我却忍不住联想到了贾樟柯，不知道那不勒斯人看这电影就和我们看贾樟柯的感觉是类似的？符号化的元素也很多了。
平淡又散乱的青春故事，在电影院看的话应该会睡着……意大利的故事好像永远都发生在夏天的海边，永远都是蓝色，这部电影更像一首写给那不勒斯的情诗。
刚开始一直压住配乐，还以为索伦蒂诺终于要朴实真诚一把了，结果好家伙，原来是为了给结尾攒个大的。直男版《85盛夏》，后半段又俗又腻，没有《85盛夏》那么做作的结构，但《上帝之手》却彻底陷入了无话可说的境地，索伦蒂诺以”个人经历“为免死金牌，将活生生的人和城市压成了标本书签，实在让人怀疑导师洋洋洒洒的那一大段教诲，他到底有没有听进去……
年度观影 No.501
（相较于本片的导演的私人化回忆和纪念来说，要比同类型同含义的《贝尔法斯特》强出两三倍，真诚真的是利器…
还是那个让我无趣的索罗塔诺，比起许多导演的自传性质电影影片显然缺少一定的戏剧张力以及内核。索罗塔诺的影像还是非常漂亮，但故事真的索然无味。但对于过于私人的电影根本没法打不及格的分数，一部电影最本质的起源就是创作者自身的经历，我们也见证了太多伟大的创作者会把一部极其私人的影片送给自己，在这个意义上，我愿意让这样私人的影像能够更多的出现，因为它代表着我心中最本真的电影追求。
我有一位自诩信奉Communism的银行职员父亲，喜欢恶作剧和擅长杂耍的母亲，我的姐姐总是待在卫生间，哥哥拥有演员梦想却自知缺乏毅力，小姨被其他人视作疯子，多数亲戚朋友都同我一样毒舌和八卦。
对味，没有走向泛滥成灾的镜头炫技，不再是华丽成颓靡的诗篇。是以追忆逝去青春年少写的一首挽歌，是私人的同时也是明亮的。夏天其实没有那么惨，毕竟法比托还有情欲与足球队。
非常私人的一部电影，像是给家乡的一封情书。镜头下的那不勒斯非常美，有着随时跳入海里的自由，热爱足球，亲戚成群。但对于我来说，可能文化断层得太过明显，导致很难从中感到乐趣。
属于索伦蒂诺的私人故事，他已经找到了激情和说出自己故事的勇气，于我并无什么情感共鸣，只是爱上了那片蓝色的海。
「瑪麗，別鬧了」身為索倫迪諾狂粉，不虧心的說，前半段完全是我所期待的當代大師，酮體、宗教神秘、多人對話、靈動推軌、絕倫美景，有其好多元素，彷彿索倫迪諾宇宙一樣令人新鮮、情懷而興奮，裸體阿姨、小和尚、馬拉度納、失聲男子、惡作劇媽媽、雜耍落淚。只可惜，後段乏力了，導演的說教簡單、暴力、激勵人心，也相對平庸無趣了，比起其他作品，本部的收尾有失大師穩重深沉的氣場，更像是無計可施，小和尚收的也不算漂亮。還是最喜歡《上流世界》，簡直全片高能，深刻扎心；但看到老爺子坐機車還是大開眼界，《上帝之手》終究把家鄉的味道，原封不動的帶給遠在大陸另一端，截然不同，卻深深共鳴的人們，這就是人性彌足珍貴吧；不過看來大師處理自傳，還是難逃軟肋，卻也十足親民而不自溺了。
前半部好难看进去，从“上帝之手”发生之后整部电影就突然变了一个气质。那段导演和法托比黄昏下的争论实在是太妙了。狂欢下的孤独，关于痛苦，我只服费里尼和索伦蒂诺。“你到底有没有故事”后劲十足。
前半段有多快乐，后半段就有多忧愁，一辈子都在追赶费里尼
前半部好难看进去，从“上帝之手”发生之后整部电影就突然变了一个气质。那段导演和法托比黄昏下的争论实在是太妙了。狂欢下的孤独，关于痛苦，我只服费里尼和索伦蒂诺。“你到底有没有故事”后劲十足。
索伦蒂诺的少年成长往事，饱含许多私人回忆，得到与失去 ，与电影的缘起，罗马是终点也是起点。
déjà vu的意大利男孩成长史。克制的配乐每次起来时都极其动人，但作为索伦蒂诺平庸了，可能艺术家真的写起自传起来都会平庸的。而且几年过去，我甚至会有些厌恶意大利式的男性风俗：圣母=淫妇。
对于索伦蒂诺来说太简单、太理所当然了，他应该比这好得多。
不能说算看完了吧，因为不到一半看睡了，后半部拒绝继续看下去
看索伦蒂诺不该把这部作为第一次看的作品，的确看到了费里尼的影子，只可惜很多地方的衔接和情感难以让人产生共鸣，各种宗教和文化障碍也成了观影的隔阂，能从很多意象看出来并理解这是导演内心深处很私人的一份回忆，但最后呈现在我眼前的观感却是一部低配版的《阿玛柯德》
Copyright © 2015-2023 All Rights Reserved
