Agora (film)

In AD 391, Alexandria is part of the Roman Empire, and Greek philosopher Hypatia is a teacher at the Platonic school, where future leaders are educated. Hypatia is the daughter of Theon, the director of the Musaeum of Alexandria. Hypatia, her father's slave, Davus, and two of her pupils, Orestes and Synesius, are immersed in the changing political and social landscape. Orestes tries to woo Hypatia with music, but she rejects Orestes's love by showing him her menstrual rags, because she prefers to devote herself to science. Davus assists Hypatia in her classes and is interested in science. He is also secretly in love with her. Meanwhile, social unrest begins challenging the Roman rule of the city as Pagans and Christians come into conflict. When the Christians start verbally insulting the statues of the pagan gods, the pagans, including Orestes and Theon, ambush the Christians. However, in the ensuing battle, the pagans unexpectedly find themselves outnumbered by a large Christian mob. Theon is gravely injured, and Hypatia and the pagans take refuge in the Library of the Serapeum. The Christian siege of the library ends when an envoy of the Roman Emperor Theodosius I declares that the pagans are pardoned, but the Christians shall be allowed to take possession of the library. Hypatia and the pagans flee while trying to save the most important scrolls before the Christians overtake the library and destroy its contents. Davus chooses to join the Christian forces. He later returns with a gladius and sexually assaults Hypatia, but he begins to sob and offers his sword to her. However, she removes his slave collar and tells him that he is free. Several years later, Orestes, now converted to Christianity, is prefect (Roman state official serving as governor) of Egypt. Hypatia continues to investigate the motions of the Sun, the Moon, the five known "wanderers" (planets), and the stars. Some Christians ridicule the thinking that the Earth is a sphere by arguing that people far from the top would fall off the Earth. When they ask Davus what his opinion is, he avoids conflict by saying that only God knows these things. Hypatia also investigates the heliocentric model of the Solar System proposed by Aristarchus of Samos by having an object dropped from the mast of a moving ship, which demonstrates that a possible motion of the Earth would not affect the motion, relative to Earth, of a falling object on Earth. However, due to religious objections against heliocentrism, the Christians have now forbidden Hypatia to teach at the school. The Christians and the Jews come into violent conflict. The leader of the Christians, Cyril, views Hypatia as having too much influence over Orestes and stages a public ceremony intended to force Orestes to subjugate her. Hypatia's former pupil, Synesius, now the Bishop of Cyrene, comes to her rescue as a religious authority counterweight but says he cannot help her unless she accepts Christianity; she refuses. Hypatia theorizes that the Earth orbits around the Sun in an elliptical orbit, not a circular orbit, with the Sun at one of the foci. Cyril convinces a mob of Christians that Hypatia is a witch, and they vow to kill her. Davus tries to warn Hypatia, but she is captured. They strip Hypatia and are about to skin her alive until Davus persuades the mob otherwise, and they decide to stone her instead. When the mob goes outside to collect stones, Davus suffocates her to spare her the pain of being stoned and tells the mob that she fainted. Davus leaves as they begin to stone her. ==Cast==

• Rachel Weisz as Hypatia of Alexandria. Weisz was already a fan of Amenábar's work when she received the script, and was very interested in the role. Although she had not heard of Hypatia before, she felt that her history was still relevant to the contemporary world: "Really, nothing has changed. I mean, we have huge technological advances and medical advances, but in terms of people killing each other in the name of God, fundamentalism still abounds. And in certain cultures, women are still second-class citizens, and they're denied education." Weisz wanted to delve more into Hypatia's sexuality and her desires, but Amenábar disagreed. She also received science lessons to help inform her depiction of the character. • Max Minghella as Davus, Hypatia's father's slave. Davus is in love with Hypatia, but it is an unrequited love, and Davus turns towards Christianity instead. When Hypatia is about to be stoned to death at the end of the film, he decides to suffocate her because he still loves her and doesn't want her to suffer any physical pain. The character of Davus was invented as "eyes for the audience" and is not based on any historical account. • Oscar Isaac as Orestes. Student of Hypatia, Orestes is an aristocrat, who like Davus, falls in love with her, and has a strong friendship with Hypatia. • Sami Samir as Saint Cyril of Alexandria • Manuel Cauchi as Theophilus of Alexandria, uncle of Cyril • Ashraf Barhom as Ammonius, a Parabalani monk • Michael Lonsdale as Theon of Alexandria, father of Hypatia • Rupert Evans as Synesius of Cyrene • Homayoun Ershadi as Aspasius the old slave. He acts as Hypatia's research assistant. ==Production==

Development After Amenábar completed The Sea Inside (2004), he took a break and traveled to the island of Malta, where he used his free time to explore the night sky. Seeing the Milky Way galaxy, Amenábar began to discuss astronomy with his friends, speculating about extraterrestrial life on other planets. He started to research astronomy and came across Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, by American astronomer Carl Sagan. Amenábar also studied historical figures such as Ptolemy, Copernicus, Johannes Kepler and Galileo, but found himself most interested in the story of Hypatia, a 4th-century Greek astronomer whose history, he felt, was still relevant: "We realized that this particular time in the world had a lot of connections with our contemporary reality. Then the project became really, really intriguing, because we realized that we could make a movie about the past while actually making a movie about the present." To prepare for the task of recreating the ancient city of Alexandria without relying on computer generated imagery, Amenábar reviewed older sword-and-sandal films such as The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), and Pharaoh (1966). Filming Principal photography began on 17 March 2008, on the island of Malta, and was scheduled to last 15 weeks. , Director Alejandro Amenábar and Production Designer Guy Hendrix Dyas during filming in Malta. Production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas used a mixture of sets and locations instead of CGI at Amenábar's direction. The construction of the set employed almost 400 people, and was the largest ever designed on the island. Actor Charles Thake (Hesiquius) suffered minor facial injuries on the set when he collided with extras running during a scene. Filming ended in June. ==Release==

Agora premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, but the film was initially unable to find a domestic distributor due to its large budget and length. The film also had trouble finding a distributor in both the United States and Italy, although it eventually found distributors in both countries. The North America premiere was held at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2009. Agora opened in Spain on 9 October 2009, breaking box office records for that country. A limited release in the United States began on 28 May 2010, opening on two screens at the Paris Theatre and the Sunshine Cinema in New York City. The film opened on the West Coast of the United States on 4 June, playing only two screens: at The Landmark theatre in Los Angeles and at Regal's Westpark 8 in Irvine. Home media In March 2010, Agora was released in Region 2-locked DVD and Blu-ray formats. A Region 1-locked DVD was released October 2010. ==Reception==

Critical response British writer and film critic Peter Bradshaw, of The Guardian, praised Alejandro Amenábar and his film, describing Agora as "an ambitious, cerebral and complex movie.... Unlike most toga movies, it doesn't rely on CGI spectacle, but real drama and ideas." Bradshaw also applauded Rachel Weisz's role as Hypatia, calling it "an outstanding performance". American screenwriter and critic Roger Ebert liked the film and gave it three stars out of four. He said: "I went to see Agora expecting an epic with swords, sandals and sex. I found swords and sandals, some unexpected opinions about sex, and a great deal more." The film holds a 53% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 93 reviews with an average score of 5.7/10. The website's critics' consensus reads, "Noble goals and a gripping performance from Rachel Weisz can't save Agora from its muddled script, uneven acting, and choppy editing." The Observatorio Antidifamación Religiosa, a Spanish Catholic group, claimed that the film was responsible for "promoting hatred of Christians and reinforcing false clichés about the Catholic Church." Michael Ordoña of the Los Angeles Times acknowledges that the film has been criticized for "perceived slights against Christians" but that "its lack of condemnation of specific dogma makes the film's target seem to be fundamentalism in general". In contrast, the New York-based Rev. Philip Grey wrote a positive review of the film: Christians who see themselves in the fanatic, murderous monks of the film and feel offended need to do some serious soul-searching... Hypatia as depicted in the film is firmly opposed to what, in her time and at her city, is offered—or rather, imposed by brute force—under the name of 'Christianity'. Nevertheless, she seems to me far more a follower of the precepts of Christianity than are her persecutors and tormentors.... In particular, in watching the deeply moving final scene, her going calmly to her death amidst the jeering mob, I could not help but strongly recall Jesus Christ on his own way to Golgotha. Box office Agora was Spain's highest-grossing film of 2009, earning over $10.3 million within four days of its release on 9 October. Based on North American theatre tracking data from Rentrak Theatrical, indieWIRE reported that Agora "scored the highest per-theater-average of any film in the marketplace" during the Memorial Day holiday weekend from 28 May through 31 May, just after its U.S. limited release. Despite this very high per-theater average, Agora was never widely released in the United States. According to Box Office Mojo, its widest release in the US was just 17 theaters. ==Historical accuracy==

(pictured) or chain mail, not segmented armor as they are shown wearing in the film. The Cambridge History of Science has described the film as "spectacularly anachronistic", singling out the film's portrayal of Hypatia's fictional discovery the law of free fall and heliocentric orbits for criticism. Antonio Mampaso, a Spanish astrophysicist and one of Agora's scientific advisors, stated in an interview that "We know that Hypatia lived in Alexandria in the IV and V centuries AD, until her death in 415. Only three primary sources mention Hypatia of Alexandria, apart from other secondary ones". He added that none of Hypatia's work has survived but it is thought, from secondary sources, that her main fields of study and work were geometry and astronomy. Mampaso dubiously claimed that Hypatia invented the hydrometer, an instrument still in use today, and that probably her father Theon of Alexandria, together with Hypatia, invented the astrolabe. However, it is generally accepted that the astrolabe had already been invented a couple of centuries earlier, and that the instrument was known to the Greeks before the Christian era. Similarly, the hydrometer was invented before Hypatia, and already known in her time. In this regard, Pappus of Alexandria was recorded as using the hydrometer before Hypatia was even born. Synesius sent Hypatia a letter describing a hydrometer, and requesting her to have one constructed for him. There is no evidence that the historical Hypatia ever studied the heliocentric model proposed by Aristarchus of Samos or that she ever found any evidence to support it. The film contains conflicting information regarding the fate of the Library of Alexandria and Hypatia's life. however, no records of the historical Library of Alexandria existed anymore at the time Hypatia was born. The last references to anyone having held membership in the Mouseion, the larger research community associated with the Library, date to the 260s AD. Theon was the head of a school called the "mouseion", In the film, Christian rioters merely knock over all the statues and burn the scrolls, whereas in reality they completely demolished the Serapeum to the ground, leaving no part of its structure intact. Agora also strongly implies that Hypatia was an atheist, Robert Barron, an American Catholic bishop, philosopher, and theologian, writes in an article: "Hypatia was indeed a philosopher and she was indeed killed by a mob in 415, but practically everything else about the story that Gibbon and Sagan and Amenábar tell is false." Irene A. Artemi, a doctor of theology at Athens University, states: "The movie—albeit seemingly not turning against the Christian religion—is in fact portraying the Christians as fundamentalist, obscurantist, ignorant and fanatic." Similarly, atheist blogger Tim O'Neill remarks: "Over and over again, elements are added to the story that are not in the source material: the destruction of the library, the stoning of the Jews in the theatre, Cyril condemning Hypatia's teaching because she is a woman, the heliocentric 'breakthrough' and Hypatia's supposed irreligiosity." ==See also==