*Agora opens next Friday in New York with a possible wider release later. It played throughout Europe last year becoming the biggest box office success on the Continent in 2009. It also won 7 Goya Awards (The Spanish equivalent of The Oscars) and was nominated for 6 others.
It’s said that one of the most difficult things to present on screen is the process of writing. Of all the arts it is the least visually kinetic and generally either a bore to watch or otherwise presented unrealistically. Well I can now say with certainty that there is another art form even more boring in its screen presentation: that of the ancient mathematician philosopher.
This is rather unfortunately what Alejandro Amenábar (director of the wonderful assisted suicide drama The Sea Inside and the haunting The Others) has attempted to do with Agora, the story of Hypatia (Rachel Weisz, trying her best to make the most of weak material), a brilliant female mind and university teacher caught in the center of a man’s world and the tumultuous time when the Roman Empire was succumbing to the forces of Christianity.
