CINEMA: Agora

It’s not often these days we get films where the Christians are the bad guys, but then Agora is not your everyday film.

For a start our heroine is an ancient Egyptian philosopher having to uphold the values of free thinking and logic over mob rule and on the cusp of understanding that the world isn’t flat, the moon isn’t made of cheese and maybe, just maybe, instead of everything revolving around us, we actually revolve around the sun.

However director Alejandro Amenabar sold this movie to the studio, it was obvious from the beginning this wasn’t going to be for a mainstream audience. But the truth is it is so specialist it may not get an audience at all, which would be a great pity as there is much to admire here.

The great city of Alexandria 391 AD is a seat of learning and power and home to one of the seven wonders of the world – its great library. Here, the philosopher and atheist Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) studies the works of the likes of Pythagoras and keeps her band of followers mesmerised by her every word. She is admired by the noble Orestes (Oscar Isaac) but also by her slave Davus (Max Minghella). But change is coming to the city in the shape of the rising tide of Christianity, with devotees of this new faith hoping to throw over the old order and create a new society – and they are not above using violence to get their own way.

Amenabar makes the metropolis of Alexandria look amazing with seamless CGI showing its wide forums and public highways along with the huge library. Weisz is perfect as Hypatia, the beauty with brains who refuses to bow down before the mob. But the film, although compelling and intelligent, is also rather dry, it in turn refuses to pander to mainstream tastes and adamantly remains a ‘thinking’ woman’s film throughout.

If you don’t like history or philosophy don’t go and see this movie, but if you’d like something that exercises the old brain matter while looking glorious, why not give this a try – it may well surprise you.