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".
世上最浪费时间的事是给年轻人讲道理，
好奇心与希望是这黑白世界里的璀璨星空与蓝色小鸟。
漂亮的电影。这真的不是迪士尼的导演来拍的吗？
可能是四星半，但的确是近几年难得觉得又美又在表达宏大社会历史背景下的价值观冲突上不显得过于刻意的。十九世纪初朝鲜王朝的思潮/朝代更替政治之争，东西学之分初见端倪，精英/庶民不同和贪腐/苛税这些亘古不变的话题被化在了丁若铨和张昌大如何“过好这一生”的个体生活选择里。读书为何，生活何为，如何让众人过上更平等又有尊严地生活呢？大概也是导演的问题吧。
前半段举重若轻还挺好的，演着演着觉得又套路了。
震撼激动琢琢磨磨之后，才明白，对于个体，这片子是如此"离经叛道"，却也是何等的优秀。不左不右，不守不狂，被催毁的灵肉探寻最正确最高贵的生存主旨，"好的要留下，好的要学会，才是正道"是最难以达成的作为。这部生物学小册子属性科普，而背后是付出一切追寻真知和大道的悲情人生，真不是庶民和强权可以接受的，却是人类文明能够发展至今必然发生的。
一个平凡的人物架构、基本没爆点的故事，却被李濬益驾驭到如此荡气回肠。拥有《素媛》的细腻情感，《思悼》的张力叙事，平稳工整之下凸显功力。
服装 建筑 道具 再加上黑白滤镜，完美呈现18世纪那种粗糙、简陋的朝鲜国农村的场景。时代背景是基督教入朝鲜初期，被视为邪教，朝鲜国和大清一样也是闭关锁国。那时还用汉字，作诗用的语言也是汉语。大学者接受了西学，似乎是看不惯阶级分化，两班和平民，自己也没有抗争的心，只得自己做无关政治的学问。关于片中圣礼学大概就是我国的儒家孔学，朝鲜也是学大清政治尊孔以达到思想上的统治地位。然后同样催生腐败，无能。这独善其身的编书做学问当然是改变不了世道，但至少思想上有意识了。然后贤者弟弟是理想主义的学者，还是希望儒家能教化官员，好好管理。但后面的剧情说明了不可能，那段剧情确实是顺理成章得让主角爆发，回到老师身边。但确实很刻意，官员脸谱化很重，按理儒家治国应该有点书生的善的。
7.5分。2021年最得中国传统思想之辨的电影，来自韩国。体会不到身为中国人“该有”的“文化自信”，只体会到了“文化自卑”。
《兹山鱼谱》
想到了苏轼李白杜甫王安石辛弃疾等等等等，如今自己也在半个体制内混感受更加细微了，不如也做乌贼吧回到大海去。
不得不说，韩国电影的水准，我们差的好远。
电影全片只有三处颜色，渔佬静心看书后的星空、学者写鱼谱时的蓝鸟、最后是遥不可及的兹山。
《兹山鱼谱》是我认为最好的韩国电影。
在信仰不同的极端关系下，人们能因为知识和品德成为了亦师亦友的忘年交，两人之间的拌嘴从激烈到打趣，关系转变的方式很巧妙。
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～
哪怕再艰难的境地，只要坚持如一地做一件事情，都有可能做到极致，成就非凡的价值。
吐槽2：关于言行举止到底是韩国学过去的儒学，造作变扭，儒士风度几乎荡然无存人物毫无魅力可言（一开始欢欣迎接抓捕我还以为是塑造成东坡类的洒脱人物），关于内涵，四书五经加诗经就是圣礼学了？整个地球仪就是西学了？到底怎么兼容的？
丁若铨在黑山岛上著《兹山鱼谱》，真有点像鲁迅先生临摹碑帖，都是在不适合自己的社会环境下做些看似无意义的事情，实在是对现状的不满。
“村里每发生一件伤心事，海螺就发出声响”，这世上有那么多海螺，每一个都有声响。
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