David recommends . . . that you go and see AGORA

Third film in a row with a strong female central character (what's that about David?).  Rather surprisingly, this time round it's pint-sized National Treasure, that cute little Rachel Weisz from The Mummy.

Now don't get me wrong, Rachel is a fine actress. It's just that to my ear she's had a tendency to, well, sound the same. Wherever and in whichever era she is meant to be. Bit like a 4th Former at Hampstead School For Girls, just popped out for a bag of crisps at lunchtime - "Golly, hope Miss Jinks doesn't spot us!"  Soviet Soldier running round the Siege of Stalingrad (Enemy at the Gates)? "Golly comrades, aren't those Nazis beastly!" Sometimes it's a bit like she's stuck in the Mummy. 

In Agora though, Rachel is not alone. It's a Spanish film, spoken in English, with a mixed Anglo-Spanish cast.  And the English actors speak in that same sub-Lumley, lower-upper class or upper-middle class voice, honed, presumably at RADA or Italia Conti. OK, so they are mostly aristocrats, but at the start it's tempting to think we are Primrose Hill or Highgate, rather than in the Roman Empire, Alexandria, around 400 AD. 

Whereas the Spanish cast, speaking in highly accented English, somehow manage far better to send us off to a time and place and culture far from our own. 

In the crime against cinema that was Alexander, Oliver Stone tried to solve this problem by casting the hero and his fellow hunky Macedonians with Irish actors, speaking with Irish accents. To distinguish them from the effete Greeks and Persians around them.  Then there's Jim Cavaziel spouting in Aramaic in The Passion of the Christ . . . 

But in Agora, plucky English prefect Rachel pulls it off, and she carries the film as she's on screen almost all the time.  Her performance is so strong because we see her character grow, age and mature as the story unfolds. And we realise this is a very different Weisz.

Hypatia starts the film as a science nerd, teaching science and philosophy in the days when they were the same subject. Why do the stars not fall from the sky? Why do they seem to move? If the earth is round, why do the people on the sides not slide down?  More questions than answers, even though Hypatia is one smart cookie.

She is an aristocrat and a pagan, like her family and most of her friends.  She works and prays at the famous Library, one of the Wonders of the World, and repository of the written knowledge of Greco-Roman culture. Plato, Aristotle, you name it, all pagans too.

And as a Strong Woman she is determined not to yield to the many suitors who want to marry her, she being cute Rachel. Under the Roman system that would mean abandoning the pursuit of truth for the traditional role limited to house and family.  (Like most feminists, she has, of course, people to do her cleaning for her - boom boom.) Importantly for the story, she is courted from both ends of the very wide Roman social spectrum.

In those early scenes Hypatia / Rachel is largely captured in mid to long shot, making the most of Weisz's youthful looks to convey a combination of beauty and earnest, almost naive enquiry. 

Then one of those titles comes up saying "Some years later . . . "  And now on we see her more often in super close up. Revealing that Rachel / Hypatia is a mature woman.  Like all good scientists, she learns from experience. 

Which is the point of the movie - the epistemology of empiricism, or deriving knowledge from observation, experience. We see Hypatia busying herself with experiments.  As she observes and learns, we realise that neither she nor Rachel are at Hampstead School for Girls after all.  A mature actress is playing a mature woman in an excellent performance.

The alternative source of knowledge is faith, and Agora could have been scripted by atheist Richard Dawkins. For unequivocally the Bad Guys are religious nuts. For beyond the peace and calm within the library walls religious intolerance is stirring.

The Christians have just been legalised.  After 400 years of murderous persecution, suddenly the Roman Emperor is one of them.  And boy, do those worms turn. We are not talking gentle Jesus meek and mild here. No affable, reasonable Archbish of Canterbury around.

Instead it's all fanaticism and hatred, and that unthinking conviction as to a monopoly on Truth which gives organised religions a bad name. Pretty soon the stoning starts. And those Jews had better watch out . . .

The entire film is summed up in one line. Talking with a Christian and hence across the epistemological divide, scientist Hypatia says "You don't question your beliefs - I have to question mine."

Which gives the film it's contemporary relevance. The rampaging Christians have been interpreted by many reviewers as the Taliban.  All ranting and vandalising and walking on coals to prove their God is superior. Their hard core cadres dress in a fashionable all-black, calling to mind the equally murderous Shi'ite militia of modern Iraq.

But I think there's a deeper relevance here. 

We are being reminded that, long before Al Qaeda, Christians spent a millenium and a half massacring people in far greater numbers. Pagans, Jews, Moslems, witches, each other.  Far more than Al Qaeda or the Taliban thus far.

21st Century Europeans and Americans need to remember our own history as we judge the 'extremists' that symbolise 'other'.  All of whom represent formerly colonised peoples.

Traditionally, Europeans and Christians have looked down on 'pagans' whether from their own past or in other, contemporary countries. That conviction of superiority led to racism, colonialism and genocide.

But in Agora we see that, in a very important sense, the Christian revolution took us backwards. It took another thousand years for Europeans to rediscover those destroyed works of Plato, Aristotle and the rest.  And to launch The Renaissance, The Scientific Revolution and The Enlightenment.  And still, today, we are having to argue the case for evolution and natural selection.

For Christian extremism is far from over. Christian fundamentalists are electing US Presidents to invade foreign countries and do battle with "Evil". Anti-abortionists kill doctors willing to terminate pregnancies. Gays and lesbians are persecuted. Women are still often deemed inferior, excluded from roles in churches. While priests of a religion based on obeying superior authority sexually abuse our children.

So Agora is not just a "sword and sandal" movie. Important questions are posed via Weisz's mature and convincing performance, the strong ensemble cast, and the swirling and soaring cinematography.  The latter has us flying over a breathtaking reconstruction of a vast, ancient city.  We see Alexandria from space, and it seems to us isolated, surrounded on one side by empty, yellow desert, and by the dark blue sea on the other.  

At the film's beginning Hypatia must feel safely isolated from the outside word's troubles, as she alternates between the hallowed library and her marbled, patrician home. But that world is penetrated and shattered by the invading forces of irrationality, hatred and, well, belief. Bringing us to a shocking climax.

So we, today, must be on guard for similar dangers. Not just from Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. But within our own Western, developed, scientific, supposedly superior societies.

Hypatia is not a creation of fiction, but a real historic figure. She taught and published works on mathematics, philosophy and astrology.  Around 400 AD she became Head of the Platonist school of Alexandria.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia

One definition of Agora is "meeting place".