Sumptuously realized, blessed with a sterling cast and neatly balancing action with dramatic elements, Alejandro Amenabar's Agora is an epic in every sense of the word. A huge story set in a time long, long ago shot largely on location on huge scale, authentically detailed sets with a high profile international cast Agora hits all of its marks with precision and grace, succeeding both as education, social commentary and entertainment. In a perfect world this would be assured of success on a scale to match the scope of the film itself but the sad reality is that the film embraces a blend of high cost and high concept that will make it a very hard sell in the multiplex. Basically Amenabar's backers are likely to lose their collective shirt on this film but, man, are they ever going to look good while doing it.
Rachel Weisz stars as Hypatia, a now legendary female philosopher and mathematician from ancient Alexandria at the time when the Roman Empire was just beginning to slip into decline and the acceptance of Christianity as a legal religion threatened to ignite a powder keg of conflicting loyalties and interests, a keg that would famously consume the entire content of the ancient Library of Alexandria - the single greatest repository of knowledge in the ancient world - is one single, violent confrontation between Christian and Pagan interests.
Amenaber divides his film neatly into two parts. In the first half we meet Hypatia early in her career as a teacher, giving classes in mathematics and astronomy in one of the pagan temples while privately trying to crack the riddle of the solar system and planetary orbits. As famous for her egalitarian nature as she was for her philosophical prowess, Hypatia would literally teach anyone who chose to come to her. Christian or Pagan, slave or free, all would be treated equally once they passed through her doors - a policy that threatened violence from both within and without at various times thanks to the obvious clashes with the prevailing norms of the time. More than one of her students would eventually fall in love with their teacher but the chamber drama within the classroom would soon be swept aside by violent confrontations between armed and angry Christian and Pagan forces, a conflict that would eventually lead to Christian dominance of the city and, hence, the region; the burning of the library and the end to Hypatia's lessons.
Part two picks up several years later. Christian and Pagan interests have struck an uneasy balance, the zealous new Christian Bishop setting aside his dislike of Pagan religion in favor of an even more intense dislike of Jews. Though greatly reduced in public stature, Hypatia has held to her largely atheistic belief system and continued her research into plantary motion with the help of her servants, turning away her suitors in favor of a life more focused on scholarship. Her students? One has become a Bishop in a neighboring region, one a member of the Christian zealot faction, a third the new Roman Prefect in charge of the city. And, sure as death and taxes, religious strife once again rises to cause chaos.
Those who have seen the trailer for Agora need no convincing as to the scope and beauty of the film. It is, quite simply, flat-out gorgeous. The casting is spot on in every case - Max Minghella being particularly strong as slave-turned-zealot Davus - and the script very neatly balancing the history with the drama. On the script front, many expressed early concern that this would play simply as an anti-Christian screed but that is very much not the case, Amenabar delivering a very balanced telling of the events. In his telling it is very clearly the Pagans who trigger the events that lead directly to the destruction of the library, all sides in all of the running conflicts being portrayed as similarly well meaning on the surface but deeply flawed below. No, this is not an anti-Christian film though it is very definitely an anti-extremism film, the message driven home in a very pointed scene in which Hypatia demands of the arrogant Christian leaders why her conversion to Christianity should be a foregone conclusion, as they claim it is. After all, has their god proven any more just or merciful than any of the others that they have overthrown and replaced. Regardless of which god may be the figurehead, tt's all just the same game over and over ...
My great fear for Agora is that a film so firmly rooted in history, one that doesn't shy away from Hypatia's philosophical beliefs and arguments - though it doesn't bog down in those, either - and one that argues against religion in general is a film that simply won't play to the masses in middle America who they will need to draw in if it is to have a prayer of making back it's hefty production budget. Much like earlier Rachel Weisz starrer The Fountain, Agora may simply be too smart for its own good.