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Agora Movie Review

Agora is a 2009 historical drama film directed by Alejandro Amenabar and starring Rachel Weisz. It’s a total misfire.

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“Synesius, you don’t question

what you believe, or cannot. I must“

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Amidst the increasing influence of Christianity on the Roman Empire, Greek philosopher and teacher Hypatia finds herself targeted for favoring science over faith. You know the feeling of utter disappointment that you get when you watch a movie from one of your favorite directors? That’s the feeling I got while watching Agora, a movie from this Spanish director who made three truly terrific films before, but this one undoubtedly tarnished his career how bad it was.

It is an admirable failure in a way as the movie is wildly ambitious, but almost in every single aspect it proved to be a crushing disappointment. First off, I have to criticize the film for a flaw that somehow the vast majority of critics failed to pinpoint and that is its extreme historical inaccuracy. What is the point of making an epic that was set in an authentic period with solid recreation of said period, but have a story that is entirely made up?

This approach reared its ugly head very quickly as it showcased Amenabar’s agenda – he made a propaganda film that is anti-Christian. You can make an argument that the pagans and Jews weren’t painted in the best light here as well, but the Christians themselves were portrayed in such a damning way that it angered me, even though I am an atheist/agnostic.

It’s okay to criticize religious zealots, but this movie did the worst thing possible as it depicted these early Christians in a ridiculously villainous, over-the-top manner. Couple that with the fact that this never happened and you’ve got one hateful movie that is so horribly biased and pseudo-intellectual that it was painful to sit through.

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I’d expected an anti-religion and pro-science movie, but what I got here was just anti-Christian and a lack of any meaningful conversations about science, which bothered me even more. For what is purported to be a film about the importance of science, I never got that from the end product. What we did get is a pretentious picture that has some inexplicable shots of Earth from space meant to inspire, but they only came across as laughably misguided.

Hypatia did not have anybody intellectual to talk to in Agora about all these scientific ideas and theories, thus making those sequence boring and lifeless. Even her story is almost entirely fictionalized. The movie’s take on misogyny came way too late in the game while her relationship with Max Minghella’s character was rushed and underdeveloped, resulting in that ending that came across as odd instead of emotionally effective as the director had obviously intended it to be.

Minghella is memorable and his performance is pretty strong, but Oscar Isaac was quite forgettable in an early, but boring role for him. Rachel Weisz was outstanding, there is no denying that, and she is the highlight of the picture. Another highlight is the production design as the architecture looks detailed and historically accurate. The score and the cinematography are also strong, but the costumes are mostly anachronistic and the movie’s editing is absolutely horrendous as the story jumps back and forth between different storylines without ever doing any one of them justice.

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