Film Review: Agora

Here are some of the bold, daring – and probably true – things you’ll learn from Agora. That the ancient Christians (the setting is Alexandria in the 4th Century) were similar in many ways to modern-day Islamists. That they had a squad of enforcers, the Parabalani, who patrolled the streets looking for signs of disrespect and blasphemy, exactly like the Taliban’s hated religious police. That – again, like the Taliban’s infamous destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan – they destroyed cultures and learning that didn’t agree with their own, in this case the Library of Alexandria. That many of the people we now know as saints were actually violent thugs. All this (and more) is gleefully proclaimed, making Agora a very deliberate subversion of pious Old Hollywood historicals like Ben Hur and Quo Vadis. I’m surprised they didn’t wait a few weeks and release it during Easter Week, for maximum mischief.

The film isn’t specifically anti-Christian, though Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar clearly has issues with his country’s traditional Catholicism (his previous film was The Sea Inside, a Message Movie lobbying for the right to die, which of course the Church opposes). Agora is more about Knowledge, the human urge to understand heavenly forces – and Amenabar’s main problem with religion seems to be the way it stifles that urge by imposing simple explanations, beating down dissent with lines like “By what authority do you criticise the work of God?”. Our heroine is Hypatia (Rachel Weisz), a teacher and astronomer, burning with the need to figure out the heavens. Does the Earth revolve around the Sun, or vice versa? If the former, why is the Sun sometimes closer and sometimes further away? If the Earth is moving, why can’t we feel it? All this at a time when nothing’s really known. “The universe is a gigantic chest,” reckons an ordinary Christian – and his theory is as valid as anybody else’s.

Amenabar punctuates the film with frequent overhead shots – God-shots, you might say – looking down on the action, as if to show the cosmos hovering above the puny affairs of men, gazing down on their intrigues and massacres. Agora’s great achievement may be in bringing to life a world ruled by ignorance. It really makes you think about our modern world, and how much it’s anchored by knowledge – because people will believe any theory, and commit any atrocity, when they literally don’t know any better. “God wants us doing what we do,” says a Parabalani thug, and who’s to say He doesn’t?

What the film doesn’t do is create a compelling story to house its compelling ideas. Hypatia herself is potentially fascinating, a dynamic woman who’s allowed to teach (because her father is in charge of the Library) but clearly hates being a woman. Courted by the handsome Orestes (Oscar Isaac), she presents him with a frankly grotesque gift – a cloth stained with her menstrual blood, so he can meditate on her own “circles” and see how “little harmony or beauty” they contain compared to the heavenly ones! Unfortunately, Amenabar doesn’t really develop this strain of self-loathing, making Hypatia too much of a heroine, and her two suitors – Orestes and Davus (Max Minghella), a slave turned Christian – are weakly written.

Agora is a sophisticated film, but not a very good one. The dialogue isn’t tin-eared – as so often in these English-speaking Euro-movies – but it’s not too memorable either (though Michael Lonsdale as Hypatia’s dad gets a poignant moment when he knows he’s dying and asks his daughter: “Promise me, when I’m gone, that you won’t remember this foolish old man”). Despite the pyrotechnics, you’re always conscious that it’s all taking place on one big set (shot in Malta, apparently), and silly detail gets in the way. At one point, the Christians decide to kill Hypatia – and everyone goes off to look for stones with which to stone her, conveniently leaving her alone for an intimate chat with Davus! Maybe it’s just not possible to do these things with a straight face after Life of Brian.

Almost a year after premiering at Cannes, Agora still hasn’t been released in the US and much of Europe. Maybe it’s too controversial, likely to stir up fundamentalists – or maybe it’s just a tiny bit stodgy, stronger on ideas than dramatic invention. There’s action, certainly. Christians slaughter Romans (and vice versa), Jews slaughter Christians (ditto) – but the overall effect is more worthy than exciting. In the end, it’s all too appropriate that the Agora in Greek city-states was where citizens met to discuss and debate matters of state. Amenabar should’ve called his film ‘Amphitheatre’.