Review of Agora (2009) by Matthew S — 29 Jun 2014

Agora is a damn fine film about a lie, but that doesn't make it not about a lie. Rachel Weisz deserves every good thing you can say about her, and the costuming department did a fine job of making things look right. The visuals are fantastic as well, but its a shame that anti-religious bigotry weighs down a fascinating story. For what it's worth, Hypatia IS a fascinating woman to study, but the way the film is presented is the story of the brave hero of knowledge taken down for her research as the Christians burned the library of Alexandria. Neither of those is true, the Serapeum, not the Library, was destroyed by Christian monks, but the Serapeum was a temple, with no reason to believe it had books, even from sources who went on the next paragraph to tell us how awful those Christians were.

There's a lot to like in it. But there's also a lot to like in Birth of a Nation. You have to get past the message.