Magnitika pedia

In this gentle Greek dramedy, Elena (Elena Topalidou) and Antonis (Antonis Tsiotsiopoulos) meet by chance and decide to travel together to find a place to bury Antonis' mother's ashes. Director Yorgos Goussis allows the actors to ad lib their lines around a loose narrative which makes for wonderfully realistic performances. There's genuine affection between the two characters but, refreshingly, it remains a platonic friendship throughout. The chill keyboard-based musical score by Lefteris Volanis perfectly offsets their journey which is by turns sad, whimsical and full of the joy of human connection. A critical and commercial success in Greece, Magnetic Fields deserved a wider audience. Thankfully, in Australia, we have the wonderful (and free) SBS Online to brings us such lesser known treasures.

I liked the fact that it was a road trip. But it was heavily edited and it was impossible to focus on the scenery. Only the protagonist was acting quite normally. I understand that it was a low budget, which doesn't bother me. In fact I appreciate it for this and only this. But it does not fulfill the requirements of the Academy to be even nominated. The Oscars are not film festival. It was embarrassing that it was proposed from Greece. As if the authorities didn't even see the movie and proposed it with some kind of corruption process or nepotism. There is no other explanation. It was barely adequate for international festivals.

When I first saw this movie I didn't know it was comedy. My friends told me there was this drama movie playing in the summer cinema, didn't tell me much about it but I went anyway. The first 30 minutes I laughed a lot and I felt embarrassed because I knew it was a dramatic film. Elena plays her role so well she has this awkwardness and her humour is to my taste. The role has depth as she is a mother who is tired, tired of her life and constantly pleasing others. She finds freedom on this island and in the company of this stranger. I love the way this film feels, its captured in way that brings an essence of nostalgia, its heartfelt, especially in the scene where she sings. I was so touched and my god that soundtrack is a masterpiece.

There are much worse ways to spend 80-minutes, and thankfully this Greek film is not one of them. Directed by Yorgos Goussis on the Ionian Sea island of Kefalonia, between December 23, 2020 and January 1, 2021, Magnetic Fields is a quiet, thoughtful, pleasure to watch.

I was especially interested to learn that the above three named participants also 'wrote' the script, although for the most part much of the screenplay seems to be have been ad libbed rather than written down with lines for the actors to learn.

The acting and dialogue are completely naturalistic and believable, and I was more than happy to ride with Elena and Antonis, and share their road trip with them.

In an era when viewers are bombarded with high speed car chases and fast-paced action sequences created mostly with the help of CGI (and soon, Artificial Intelligence), immersing myself in this movie was a source of great delight.

Simple and meaningful, natural dialogues with a twist, great photography, typical greek environments, everything so familiar and clear, 90's aesthetics but not forced. An honest journey of vulnerability, in the search of a deeper connection. Excellent, poetic work, awesome acting. Elena and Adonis, with their real names in the movie, make you forget that you are watching two actors in action. The dialogues, the awkwardness between them and the preserved tenderness that slowly develops, their bursts of laughter and the sudden deep confessions, kept me there connected to them until the last scene and until the next day.