Review of Agora (2009) by Jean-Pierre B — 22 Oct 2010

Alejandro Amenábar's masterpiece is a breathtaking excursion into religious fascism and misogynistic tyranny made special by Rachel Weisz, who probably give one of the best female acting performances in years as a scientist who was light years beyond her generation.

Weisz is amazing and her performance is the show and then some. Well acted sword and sandals period films that has a remarkable breathtaking performance by Rachel Weisz that is deserving of the high praise she has gotten for her role but there is no denying the fact that the script has some very glaring problems that serves more to derail the great acting strides made by every actor in the movie other than help with their performances.

Rachel Weisz is with out a doubt, an actor's actor, one of the best we have working today and she manages to work against the grain to put together a complex heroine whose internal conflict with herself and others is a breath of fresh air in this time and age of cinema and she helps keeps this movie alive, too bad that the script is so motivated in its self serving righteousness that instead of having Weisz's complexity, it flouters in such an incoherent way that you have no idea on what is going on during the later parts of the film thanks to too many story lines happening at once, which take up too much time of what this film should have been about and that should have been more a look at a complex women who stood her ground during a very dark period in human history.

She's back up by Max Minghella, who is a great actor in his own right and Oscar Isaac, who is just as good. The triangle between them in believable and touch by their struggles to find their destinies.

Its a moving cinematic piece of art and Alejandro does the story proud in his way of capturing the time of struggles of that time. Its a very good film, don't get me wrong but it could have been much more, especially with Rachel Weisz giving such a remarkable performance.