Screening out of official competition, Alejandro Amenábar's Agora is an intelligent, sweeping epic surrounding the last days of a little-known Greek scholar, perhaps the first feminist, the astronomer Hypatia (Rachel Weisz).
It's Egypt in the 4th century, and chaos and revolution are engulfing the town of Alexandria. The Christians, the pagans, and the Jews are all jockeying for power — and wantonly slaughtering each other — during the waning days of the Roman Empire. Front and center of the uprising is a woman so devoted to her passion, astronomy and solving the riddle of our solar system, that she hasn't any time for men or family; nor has she much use for religion, which at that time was akin to a death wish.
"She wasn't a strong pagan," said Amenábar, speaking at today's press conference for the film. "She had Christian in her classes. Sometimes it's true a writer talks through his characters. Maybe because I don't have faith, she doesn't have faith maybe. From the chronicles you can tell her passion was science."
Weisz, too, acknowledged the steep learning curve of portraying Hypatia. "I never heard of her before I read the script," she said, explaining that a good chunk of her research was spent consulting with noted historian Justin Pollard. "It's an unusual story. It's extraordinary. There are fragments of her letters that exist."
Hypatia is first shown as a teacher, and, not surprisingly she attracts the affection of uber-contrarian Orestes (Oscar Isaac), who eventually tries to win her over by playing a flaccid song at a very public gathering. But the one man who truly lusts after her is her slave Davus (Max Minghella), who begins as a pagan, but then switches sides to the Christians after realizing the good feeling he got handing out bread to starving Alexandrians. It contrasts the brutality of the Christians, as they eventually took control of Alexandria.
Amenábar also addressed the potential interpretation of the film as anti-religion or anti-Christian. "I suppose you could say it's anti-Christian, but I tried to explore the nice side of Christianity, when Davus hands the bread out to the people. The movie is against fundamentalism. The movie isn't denouncing Christianity."
Clocking in at almost two hours, the epic is told smartly and efficiently. Although it's unavoidable for Weisz to come off as being sexy (uh, she just is), she manages to play the role of Hypatia sexless — no low-cut togas here. Isaac plays Orestes, who eventually becomes the prefecture of the region, as a rather emasculated, conflicted hero: A man in love with Hypatia for her intellect and her obdurate stance on bowing for religion, but a man who himself bends for religion.
"My movies talk about the same things," Amenábar said. "About having a human perspective about everything." Moreover, he noted, Agora is a fitting movie at this time in the history of the world. "I think now the United States is the Roman Empire," he said. "We are now in a political crisis, an economic crisis. So this is time for change. I don't think we'll go back to the Middle Ages, but we can feel that something is just not fitting right now."
[Photos: top, WireImage; Weisz, Telecinco]