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.

We should not have to deconstruct a movie that we have enjoyed.

The old video cassette aesthetic, shooting with a camcorder, 4:3 ratio, let's head on. This is a proposal. Let's exploit high ISO and mix it up with the RBG settings on editing to make a statement.

Yet this indie road movie does not convince and along it's way it looses it self. Only the male lead seems to be standing, the script falls apart along the way and the editing seems raw and cruel between the scenes.

You need more than patience to complete the whole story. It has some nice scenes, filled with nostolagia but in general the movie does not take you where you want to go.

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.

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.

Being a supporter of the Greek cinematography and authenticity, I was very excited about this movie after reading all the fabulous reviews. When I was watching it, however, all I kept thinking is how on earth it attracted so good reviews? Why people are even considering to submit this movie as the official entry for the Academy Awards? The acting is overall nothing outstanding and very mediocre; compared to what others thought, I enjoyed watching Tsiotsiopoulos, but I couldn't find any joy in Topalidou. It was like she was on cannabis or substances throughout the whole movie. The plot is nothing interesting, nor are most of the discussions. The film seems to have been very low budget, as it was shot by an iPhone camera at times... I genuinely only liked the nature and the views, as well as the fact that I was watching a movie in my native language. Shame other outstanding Greek movies so far haven't gotten that level of attraction.