Agora

Maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention, but I’m not quite sure how Agora adds up together. Mostly an examination of religious demagoguery gone insane, but contains a female character who was a mathematician, scientist, astronomer, philosopher, and teacher trying to figure out the earth’s rotation. And much of Agora is just watching as the crazy, murderous Christians begin killing the intellectuals and pagans for daring to not convert.

It all adds up to a lot of pretty images and not much else. On a technical level, the film is utter perfection, but it gives its three main actors nothing to do besides act out as caricatures or, mostly in Rachel Weisz’s case, stare soulfully into the distance. Her character spends much of the film wrapped up in her various academic studies and theories, mumbling that they are “definitive proof” of something (she’s not quite sure of what herself), and being indifferent to the obvious love triangle she’s trapped in.

The costumes, cinematography, production design, makeup/hair are all top notch, but that does not a movie make. It’s hard to know exactly what they were trying to sell us on in this film. Were they trying to tell us how the rise of Christianity and religious zealotry killed away a more philosophical, reasoned way of thinking? Or is that just the background noise for the story of Hypatia, a historical figure who deserves a better treatment than this? Basically, it boils down to this fairly simple-minded philosophy: “There are more things that unite us than divide us.” It’s a pity that this film couldn’t find a united, coherent whole to present to us then.