Agora (2010) Comedy, movie story Hollywood movie Online movie trailer Comedy, Movie review English movie Online
CREW:
Theatrical Release:May 28, 2010 Wide
Produced by :Fernando Bovaira
Director: Alejandro Amenábar
Writers: Alejandro Amenábar Mateo Gil
Music by: Dario Marianelli
Cinematography by: Brandon Trost
CAST:
Rachel Weisz, Max Minghella
Agora (2010) Story:
The film centers around the astronomer-philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria (Weisz) and several men whom she knows such as her slave, Davus (Minghella), and her pupils, Orestes (Oscar Isaac) and Synesius (Rupert Evans), all of whom become major players in the changing political social landscape.[6] The film begins with Alexandria under Roman pagan rule. Hypatia, daughter of a scholar, teaches at the Platonic school, where many future leaders are educated. She is wooed by her student Orestes, while her slave Davus keeps his love for her secret. Meanwhile, social unrest begins challenging the Roman rule of the city as pagans and Christians come into conflict. The pagans, including Orestes and Hypatia's father, ambush the Christians to quash their rising influence, but find themselves unexpectedly outnumbered. Hypatia's father is gravely injured and Hypatia and the pagans take refuge in the Library of Alexandria. The Christian siege of the library ends when an envoy of the Roman Emperor declares that the Christians shall be allowed to enter the library. Hypatia and the pagans flee, grabbing what scrolls and documents they can, before the Christians overtake the library and destroy its contents. Davus, torn by his love for his mistress and the possibility of gaining his freedom by joining the rising tide of Christianity, chooses to join the Christian forces.
The film continues several years later: Orestes (now converted to Christianity) is prefect of Alexandria. Hypatia continues to investigate the motions of the heavenly bodies, though she is forbidden from teaching at the school. The Christians and the Jews come into conflict, committing violent acts against each other, with the Christians ultimately wresting power from the only other religious group remaining. The leader of the Christians, Cyril (Sami Samir), views Hypatia as having too much influence over Orestes and stages a public ceremony intended to force Orestes to subjugate her. Hypatia's former pupil, Synesius, now the Bishop of Cyrene, comes to her rescue as a religious authority counterweight, but says he cannot help her unless she accepts Christianity. She refuses. Cyril convinces a mob of Christians that Hypatia foments civil disobedience and they vow to kill her. Davus tries to run ahead to warn Hypatia, but she is captured by the mob. Davus secretly suffocates her while the mob gathers stone to stone her with.
Agora (2010) SYNOPSIS
Agora is a 2009 Spanish historical drama film directed by Alejandro Amenábar, written by Amenábar and Mateo Gil, and starring Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz and Max Minghella. It tells the story of Hypatia, a female philosopher in Roman Egypt, who is portrayed by Weisz. With dramatic license, the biopic includes a romantic angle: her slave falls in love with her. The film was co-financed by Spanish company Sogecable. It was screened Out of Competition at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival in May, was released in Spain on 9 October, and is being released country by country throughout late 2009 and early 2010.
Agora (2010) REVIEW
I watched Agora at its Malta premiere. And I liked it.
I have to declare an interest: two actually. One is that however dispassionate one tries to be about a film that one is connected with even in the remotest of ways, there's still an underlying wish that people like it. The other is that I'm a preaching, pious, practicing atheist and this film tells the story of an atheist saint who lives for her convictions: the religion of questioning anything, and the faith that there are answers to every question and the answers are real and true even we are as yet unable to discover them.
Hypatia is a teacher and philosopher who lives in Alexandria at a time when a major transformation is happening to a Roman Empire well past its prime. Christianity, previously suppressed because of its obsessive destructive monolithic monopoly of any alternative interpretation of truth and for its morbid fascination and dark affinity with suffering and death, is becoming a mainstream faith. But in its battle for the hearts and minds of the Alexandrians, Christianity cannot persuade and reason. Who can outwit, out-speak, out- reason and exceed the persuasive skills of the heathen protectors and renewers of the Platonic and academic tradition? Where persuasion does not work, Christians resort to superstition, threats, witch-hunts, violence and murder. It may not be Christian behaviour, but it works; and as Hypatia herself acknowledges, the Christians have won and reason, knowledge and the pursuit of truth have lost.
At the very opening of the film, and at different pauses for reflection, the director zooms away from the scene and looks at it from high up above. Hitchcock looked down from the height of the clouds, there where the screams and the fires in the village attacked by birds are too far to hear and see. Cameron looked down from the star lit night sky, at the sinking Titanic that from that distance looked like a barely floating piece of flotsam, not the calamity experienced from those inside the ship. Gibson looked down from the point of view of God when he shed a tear that shook the Golgotha.
Amenabar takes a bird's eye view, or a God's eye view if you like, of his own time. These are Google Earth shots that rapidly zoom away and sea earth as a geographical reality bereft of all the details of the cities and people that pollute its surface. From so high up above Africa of 500 AD looks exactly like today's Africa. And so of the Mediterranean and of the Nile Delta.
I don't think this is merely a stylistic nod to the Google Earth age. I think it can also be a visual statement that the secterian violence of Alexandria of 15 centuries ago is identical to Gujarrat, Kabul, Belfast, Sarajevo, Darfur and Rwanda of our time. That from high up above the period costumes, the faded Egyptian statues and the defunct languages and religions cannot be seen. What can be seen is a planet inhabited by humans who find dignity and humanity in their right to hold strong views but who compensate for their inability to persuade others by using coercion and violence.
True, religion poisons everything. True the morality police of the newly Christian Alexandria look remarkably like an earlier day Taliban or latter day Pharisees whom Jesus challenged to be the ones to throw the first stone. The pogroms of the newly Christian Alexandria and the Christ-killing libel of the time is replicated by anti-Semites to this day. Also true that for Christians anywhere the film is a reminder that the worst thing about their convictions is the unjustified belief that their faith is superior to darker faiths that are plagued by integralism, intolerance, militancy and violence.
But this is not a film of a Republican Spaniard who looks for another metaphor for the Spanish Civil War. This is the story of violence whether inspired or justified by religion or not. This could be about sports, about politics, about anything that people feel would justify them in acting in a way that would prevent others from living out their lives.
Was it a good film? Yes, I thought so. If I was to be picky, I'd say that I'm still not convinced about the idea of using inter-titles mid-way through the film to bring the audience up to speed with the change in context before the second Act starts. I'm a bit old fashioned that way and I would have preferred to have all that woven into the dialogue and the images of the film. I felt the film lost momentum at that point, though I am indeed being picky because the rhythm is very quickly regained.
I liked the film because, though a period film, the hero is a woman who never brandishes a knife and who never thrills us with her fighting skills. In that way the story remains honest with itself. As she is accused of witch-craft, Hypatia cracks the Copernican code, unarmed and disarming.
And I liked the film because I'm biased. Because it tells Christians a story they can choose to ignore like the seeds whom the farmer cast carelessly on rock and were quickly eaten by birds. You cannot question what you believe. I mus
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