‘Novak’ review: Zlatko Buric’s convincing mad scientist elevates this offbeat Greek debut

Dir/scr: Harry Lagoussis. Greece/Switzerland. 2025. 110mins.

The blurred frontier between maniac and visionary is explored to intriguing however uneven impact in Harry Lagoussis’s function debut, the mad scientist drama Novak. The movie ambitiously tackles a variety of up to date themes, centred on a persuasive efficiency by Zlatko Buric as an ageing physician rescued from enforced obscurity by a bunch of zealous younger followers. But, given the script’s high-stakes points, the movie’s plodding model fails to interact the feelings. Nonetheless there may be nonetheless sufficient occurring to counsel that, following its premiere in Edinburgh Worldwide Movie Competition’s competitors, Novak may transfer into additional competition slots and attraction to audiences with a style for the thoughtfully offbeat.

Buric builds a compellingly watchable character

The early scenes take a very long time to maneuver issues into place, indicating an issue with pacing that’s by no means fairly overcome. Chubby, wild of hair and apparently as burnt out because the cigarette stubs that mount up in his ashtray, Croatian Dr Novak (Buric, the 2022 European Movie Awards finest actor for Triangle Of Disappointment), not often leaves his grungy Athens residence, having been professionally disgraced years earlier than for his morally questionable scientific practices.

One wet evening, wide-eyed idealist Petros (Yannis Papadopoulos) exhibits as much as announce that, a while in the past, one in every of Novak’s innovations – a hydro-saturation machine constructed to forestall people from the damaging results of electromagnetic fields – virtually saved his father’s life. (The know-how in Novak seems much less Silicon Valley, extra Frankenstein.) The time has come, Petros believes, for a Novak comeback.

Petros invitations Novak to proceed his curtailed analysis at New Atlantis, a commune in a rambling, atmospheric home owned by Maria (Elena Topalidou). Members of the commune embrace Louise (Ella Rumpf, Marguerite’s Theorem), who makes brief movies to boost consciousness of electromagnetic air pollution (smartphones and social media are inevitably notable by their absence), Max (Nikos Manesis), who’s extra proactive, damaging cellphone towers at evening, and self-harming Daphne (Korina-Anna Gougouli).

First Daphne after which Louise provide themselves as much as Novak’s genius. The physician, his ego freshly massaged, begins to look worryingly like he would possibly repeat his former errors, clipping electrodes onto heads in pursuit of a pure and transcendent psychological state to flee the electromagnetic risks. Inevitably, tensions intensify over the previous man’s ethics and begin to fracture the commune, and eventually, the dramatic stakes start to rise.

Novak is thematically bang updated because it explores the themes of unquestioning techno-worship, cult followings and the social risks of blind submission to authority: the ultimate stretch of the movie makes a plea for extra human values within the face of this onslaught. However little of that is introduced efficiently to dramatic life: plotting, pacing and dialogue really feel flat all through, with a few scenes – the statutory feelgood go to to the seashore, for instance – not advancing the plot in a significant manner. Some sequences really feel overstretched, whereas others finish too abruptly.

Buric rises above all this, constructing a compellingly watchable character on the concept of a mad scientist given a second probability. Novak’s weighty, bearlike charisma make him completely believable as the thing of the commune’s adoration, and Buric brings conviction to inadvertently comedian dialogue that too usually appears drawn from unhealthy self-help manuals – “True happiness comes from inside”, “Being ourselves is probably the most revolutionary factor we are able to do”, and many others.

In distinction, Novak’s acolytes are drawn with a broad brush, lack a lot interiority and are let down by the implausible strains they must utter. (Petros particularly is hobbled early on by stretches of clumsy B-movie exposition.) The marginally older Maria aside, the group’s sheer gullibility strains perception within the story. There may be an attention-grabbing level to be made right here about Gen Z’s longing for sturdy management in an unsure world, however Novak by no means makes it.

A formidable visible creativeness is on show, with the cluttered mess of the commune making a shadowy backdrop and a few putting makes use of of perspective. Lagoussis’s cartoonist background is presumably behind one in every of Novak’s highlights, a brief and darkly comedian video made by Louise to warn folks of the hazards of electromagnetic air pollution. The soundtrack options some terrific low-budget indie pop tunes from the likes of the Seeds and the Fiery Furnaces, recommendations of edginess and vitality in a movie that might have benefitted from extra.