Review of Agora (2009) by Lindy L — 05 Jun 2010

Rachel Weisz is wonderful as Hypatia, the philosopher of Alexandria. Mateo Gil and Alejandro Amenabar deliver a rather solid script which is as feminist as it can be, rooting for the protagonist all the way.

Unfortunately, their work does not escape from the pitfalls of melodrama. Given the fact that we don't really know much about Hypatia's death, and the exact way that it happened, the director (who is also the co-writer) improvises a highly dramatic finish line which also gives quite a lot more credit to Hypatia's scientific work than one could directly bestow, going as far as supporting that she discovered the elliptic orbit of the Earth around the Sun.