Democritus's atomic theory and Aristarchus's heliocentric model of the universe are not subjects that can often be said to delight audiences at the Cannes film festival.
But Alejandro Amenabar's Agora did just that in its premiere today, with Rachel Weisz starring as the 4th-century mathematician and astronomer Hypatia, who was killed by an angry Christian mob in Romano-Egyptian Alexandria.
The film, part of the festival's official selection but not competing for the Palme d'Or, received cheers. According to Edward Gibbon, in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hypatia's "flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells". Amenabar spares his heroine quite such a grim end – but he does portray her as an areligious, Enlightenment heroine destroyed by brutal fanatics.
"Once we started researching the film we recognised a lot of echoes with contemporary times and realised we could make a film about the present," he said. Some viewers have even likened the depiction of the members of the parabolani, an early-Christian brotherhood, to the modern Taliban. "It's true the parabolani
resemble a little bit the Taliban," said Amenabar. But it is not deliberate. Agora, which co-stars Max Minghella as Hypatia's slave Davus, gives all religions a hard time: Jews, Christians and pagans are all depicted as, at times, vengeful and violent, with Hypatia and her pupils representing the forces of reason.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/17/agora-rachel-weisz-cannes-amenabar-minghella
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