Mod Producciones, Himenoptero, Telecinco Cinema
Rachel Weisz, Max Minghella, Oscar Isaac, Ashraf Barhom, Michael Lonsdale, Rupert Evans, Richard Durden, Sami Samir, Manuel Cauchi
This is a movie that no doubt fell off your radar. It’s a strange experience to watch this movie. It’s a small foreign made English language film. It’s biggest problem is that it doesn’t know for sure what it wants to be. If they had chosen a particular genre and run with it, it might be better. As is, it’s a very interesting story. Hypatia is an interesting character in history. Daughter of Theon, one of the caretakers of the Library in Alexandria which housed most of the knowledge of ancient times. She was born sometime around 350 AD, and was one of the greatest scholars of Mathmatics, Philosophy, and Astronomy, she was a student of the works of Plato and Aristotle and others. Her students were both Christian and others. It was an interesting time in Roman times in this Roman-Egyptian world. Many of the Romans were pagans and followers are a mixture of Christians and non-Christians. One side of this movie is the life story of Hypatia. Meanwhile, there are moments of warfare as the Christians are outnumbering the others, and there is a war going on between the pagans, the Christians and the Jews. So in a way, it’s a war story. But Hypatia, who proclaims herself an atheist, falls in love with a Christian student and a slave. So in the mix is a “sort of” love story. There are some sex scenes thrown in randomly that really don’t seem to be thrown into the film. Though not really necessary at all, they appear to be simply thrown in for the sake of it. Then there is the scientific portion which is probably the most interesting of the whole film. Throughout, Hypatia is trying to teach her students that they are students and brothers regardless of the god they believe in (or the one they don’t believe in), and even more so, trying to figure out how the universe runs. Starting with the fact that the sun is the center of the universe and the earth circles the sun, then why does the sun look closer in the summer when it’s hot, and smaller in the winter when it’s cold? Trying to solve this riddle is another main portion of the film.
When it all comes down to it, it’s difficult to do a perfectly accurate history of things that happened nearly 2000 years ago. So I’m sure some of the things that happen in this film are not historically accurate, but the kind of things that happen in the film did happen around that time. It’s a lot of different styles in one, but all in all, it’s a very interesting story. If you can overlook the quirkiness of the different styles thrown together it is a touching story of the life of this interesting woman. This is one of those films that you watch, and immediately go to Wikipedia to learn more! Quirky, but well worth watching.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
Movie Review - Agora (2009) {R},
