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Agora (Film)

by Mark Demetrius | November 15, 2010 12:01 | Edited November 15, 2010 13:02

Well researched, and anchored by Rachel Weisz’s impressive lead performance, this is a fascinating film that avoids the Hollywood epic route.

Films set in ancient times - at least those with large budgets and famous actors - have always tended to be sword-and-sandal epics. In recent years, they've also favoured CGI- based style over content and substance. Agora is different on all counts, and deserves credit for its uncompromising and "uncinematic" theme.

 

This is the true story of Hypatia: philosopher, astronomer, mathematician and writer. Played here by Rachel Weisz, Hypatia was an extraordinary individual by any measure, and probably a genius. A Greek scholar from Alexandria in Roman Egypt, she was also decidedly brave, which was one of the reasons for her eventual espousal by Romantic poets and, latterly, feminist historians. Few public intellectuals of her place and time were avowedly atheist, and fewer still were women.

 

Given the subtlety of much of its content, Agora is a visually spectacular film, architecturally not the least of it. Shot in Malta - and, incidentally, in English - it boasts an impressive amount of real construction, as opposed to digital retouching.

 

There's an implicit assumption in Agora that its themes are absorbing in themselves, and a merciful absence of any romantic subplot. (As well there might be: Hypatia died a virgin.) But Hypatia has two utterly besotted admirers. One is her young slave, Davus (Max Minghella), who faces an ironic dilemma: he loves her, but knows that he can be free if he abandons her and joins the surging ranks of the Christians. The other is the witty and privileged Orestes (the Guatemalan-born Oscar Isaac), a born leader who goes on to become the head of the Roman Empire in Alexandria.

 

The role of Hypatia is a notably demanding one, because Weisz has to project a serene yet tough and stoical image, and to seem a paragon of stately self-control without appearing merely flat and wooden, while simultaneously suggesting repressed inner feelings. And on top of that, she needs to convey a passionate love of knowledge. For the most part, she gets this delicate balance right.

 

Agora is well researched, and well made and scripted by writer-director Alejandro Amenabar (The Sea Inside, The Others). Barring a slight element of license in depicting the circumstances of Hypatia's untimely death, it's largely historically accurate. And, apart from a few swelling strings, Agora resists all the platitudes in a genre that positively abounds in them. Though there's more than a quorum of violence and turbulence, the film never tries to be swashbuckling, or to cater to chronically short attention spans. That, above all, is what makes it interesting.