Agora

Agora

So off to see “Agora” I went, with the expectation of an epic filled with sex, swords, and sandals. Instead I got a ton more than that. It is a film about thoughts; a drama that revolves around the whole ancient clash between science and superstition. It is centered around a woman who was a scientist, mathematician, philosopher and astronomer in fourth century Alexandria Egypt oh yeah, she was also a teacher too; women were not really supposed to be those things at this time.

Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) was born into it; her father Theon (Michael Lonsdale) served as the librarian for the Library of Alexandria whose purpose was to “gather all knowledge in the world.” People from all over would come there to study and donate manuscripts. In 391 A.D., Christians destroyed it so “Agora” takes place during those years surrounding what must be one of history’s greatest single acts of intellectual vandalism.

The title refers to the name given public assembly places in ancient Greek city states. The library was such an agora, and we see Hypatia teaching a class of young men who listen to her with open admiration.

You get an early hint that this isn’t going to be just another CGI action fest like “Troy” when Hypatia actually teaches something using an elaborate scale model of planetary motion (centuries ahead of Galileo), she deduces that Earth cannot be at the center of the universe.

Hypatia has three students who are completely her thralls: Davus (Max Minghella), Synesius (Rupert Evans) and Orestes (Oscar Isaac). All three make the error of feeling lust for her Orestes least subtly. You get no sense that Hypatia even registers sexual feelings; perhaps she believes her vocation rules them out. Her method of rejecting Orestes is brutally direct. Rachel Weisz, though beautiful, makes no effort to exploit that, and is single-minded in her dedication to knowledge.

Director and co-writer Alejandro Amenabar re-creates Hypatia’s Alexandria with a mix of sets and effects, showing the city at the tipping point between Greek and Roman paganism on one side, and Christianity on the other. As she studies with her father (who draws from scrolls in the library), out on the streets Christians burn with fearful intensity. Hypatia herself is not interested in religion; she feels passion only for ideas.

Needless to say, neither group is pacifist. Both are possessed of that unique certainty that their opponents must be evil. There is bloodshed. Foolishly underestimating their numbers, the pagans led by Orestes conduct a bloodletting, only to find out in a savage lesson that there are more Christians than they knew about. This culminates in the destruction of the library itself; Hypatia races to rescue armloads of scrolls with her students one or two may literally have been responsible for our surviving texts from Aristotle et al.

In sword-and-sandal epics such as this, I think we know who’s going to be wearing black hats: Those would be those good olé’ intolerant Christians who refuse to brook any deviation from dogma or threats to orthodoxy or anything else like that there. Not this time. Christians and pagans alike are blinded by their hatred of people who disagree with them after all what good can come from one empire allowing two religions why it might even lead to three?!

My friends it seems like every day a new war breaks out somewhere but today I am happy because I have found another one between science & superstition! And let me tell ya folks; this battle has got everything including sex swords sandals more ideas than you can shake a stick at plus an ancient library with all the knowledge in the world and some Christians burning people alive just because they think differently. It’s enough to make your head spin!

There’s historical truth here. Often times, his followers don’t follow Jesus’ actual teachings appropriately. Additionally, the film can easily be compared to militant Islam and to the sectarian conflicts in the Middle East as well as other places. The movie does not do a lot with Hypatia’s gender; perhaps women’s subjugation was so instinctively and universally recognized that she was thought of less as a woman and more of a daughter passing on her father’s lessons.

It is beyond doubt that Hypatia was a genius. For example, her invention called hydrometer is now being used in the Gulf to differentiate oil from water by their specific densities. While “Agora” resists the urge to insert a romantic subplot into this story, it does play up her character’s role as an object of emotional intrigue for male students who had never encountered anything remotely like her.

Alejandro Amenabar seems interested in stories where intellectualism insists on engaging with reality. In “The Sea Inside” (2004), Javier Bardem played a man paralyzed from neck down who fought for right to die legally. In “Open Your Eyes” (1997), a disfigured man struggles to express love for woman whose life he has ruined through his irresponsibility; it later turns out she has been dead all along and he has been dreaming about her while asleep under influence of powerful hallucinogenic drug supplied by his best friend Eduardo Noriega’s character Cesar.

Also underrated supernatural thriller The Others stars Nicole Kidman as mother living alone in large old house during World War II who becomes convinced it is haunted by ghosts; eventually discovers they are herself and children whom she murdered before committing suicide because couldn’t bear them encountering cruel world outside but remains trapped there forevermore due inability or unwillingness accept death.

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