Agora (Bilingual)

4th century A.D. Egypt under the Roman Empire— Violent religious upheaval in the streets of Alexandria spills over into the city's famous Library. Trapped inside its walls, the brilliant astronomer Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) and her disciples fight to save the wisdom of the Ancient World. Among them, the two men competing for her heart: the witty, privileged Orestes (Oscar Isaac) and Davus (Max Minghella), Hypatia's young slave, who is torn between his secret love for her and the freedom he knows can be his if he chooses to join the unstoppable surge of the Christians.

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Ve siècle après J.-C. L’Égypte est sous domination romaine. À Alexandrie, la révolte des Chrétiens gronde. Réfugiée dans la grande bibliothèque, la brillante astronome Hypatie tente de préserver les connaissances accumulées depuis des siècles. Parmi ses disciples, deux hommes se disputent l’amour d’Hypatie : Oreste et le jeune esclave Davus, déchiré entre ses sentiments et la perspective d’être affranchi s’il accepte de rejoindre les Chrétiens de plus en plus puissants...

Amazon.ca

Alternating between cosmic splendor and human squalor, Agora is a movie of unusual ambition. In the last days of the Roman Empire, the Egyptian city of Alexandria is torn between the aristocratic pagan society and the emerging, rough-and-tumble Christians. As this broad cultural conflict teeters violently back and forth, the scientist-philosopher Hypatia (Rachel Weisz, The Brothers Bloom, The Fountain) struggles to resolve the motion of the planets with her belief in celestial perfection. Tangled in her life are three men: a Roman prefect (Oscar Isaac, Body of Lies), a Christian bishop (Rupert Evans, Hellboy), and a slave (Max Minghella, The Social Network) who turns to Christianity to escape his unrequited love for Hypatia. Some viewers will be uncomfortable with Agora's depiction of early Christianity and others will quibble about the movie's historical accuracy, but the movie's themes--of faith vs. zealotry, of religion vs. the spirituality of science--and its vivid depiction of one culture being brutally supplanted by another demonstrate a scope seldom found in contemporary film. Writer-director Alejandro Amenábar previously made popular ghost story The Others, mind-bender Open Your Eyes, and heartbreaker The Sea Inside; clearly, this is a career to watch. Don't overlook the deleted scenes--the gorgeous original opening shot accentuates the twin pulls of science and spirituality. --Bret Fetzer

 

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