Dvd review: Agorà

The life and death of Hypatia, one of the last classical philosophers.

Alejandro Amenabar is a master of his trade and so technically Agorà is superb. Beautifully shot, with strong performances from practically everybody involved and a deep emotional core this is without doubt an engrossing experience.

A lot of Christian fundamentalist took exception with the subject of the film. For those not in the known Hypatia, of whom we don’t know a lot about, is an unofficial patron saint of Atheism. I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty details of what’s happened, suffice to say that Christians don’t look particularly good in this movie.

Now with all their inflamed rhetorics the fundamentalist played right into Amenabar lap. Because the movie is actually very well researched and even if we don’t know a lot of details about Hypatia life what’s in the movie is at least plausible and the Christians at that time and place were really an unruly mob. Now on the other side this is clearly a movie with an agenda, the director is a declared atheist and he clearly made this movie to prove a point but by pointing the finger at fundamentalists more than at Christians he clearly sidestepped any possible meaningful critique.

Going back to the movie in itself that same agenda is what stops the movie short of being really good. The overarching battle between the new religion and the old values is so all encompassing that the various characters are often nothing more than mere shadows. Also the overall picture that is painted by the movie is really too grim even from an historical point of view, some of the classical culture was saved, actually by the very priests that are the main bad guys here.

In the end kudos for making philosophical discussion actually engrossing but with more nuanced characters this story would have been much more interesting. As it is it’s worth a viewing only for fans of the genre.