Alejandro Amenabar’s excellent Agora opened this past week in limited release and I can’t help but wonder why a film that resembles Gladiator (except smarter and more entertaining) is being dumped by its distributor at the end of May rather than given a wide-release on thousands of screens.

I thought the only reason this could be so is if the film was horrifyingly awful, but it’s not. In fact, it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen so far this year. So the only explanation for why a film that has an epic-scope but is being released as if it had an indie-focus is because of its about religion versus science.

The film is about astronomer/philosopher Hypatia (played perfectly by Rachel Weisz), a woman who was seen as an intellectual equal amongst the men in Alexandria in 391 A.D. She teaches a class at the Library of Alexandria about her theories on whether or not the sun revolves around the Earth or vice versa. In her class is the young, charming Orestes (Oscar Isaac) who is after her heart. At home is her smart and loyal slave Davus (Max Minghella) who has loved her for a long time. Outside the walls of the library, however, there is a war shaping up between the pagans and the Christians. The pagans have been in power for a long time, but the Christians are growing in numbers and are growing more violent by the day.

I’ll stop with the plot description now. The truth of the matter is that this is not a film about Christianity being inherently evil, per se. It’s about the mob mentality that can erupt when there is a combination of 1) lack of education, 2) poverty and 3) an influx of any religion. The movie illustrates how easy it is for the weak-willed to fall prey to fundamentalism and extremism (starting to sound familiar?). It’s not that religion is evil, it’s that it can be used as a tool for intolerance. This is illustrated best by the scene in Agora when the Christians ransack the library, destroying books and information. For what purpose? Because it is of no use for them to read books when they have the only book that matters.

I was especially struck by a scene in which Cyril (Sami Samir), the pope-like figure in Alexandria, asks Orestes to kneel before the bible that Cyril holds. When Orestes doesn’t kneel, the crowd turns on him, despite the fact that Orestes is a Christian. The reason he doesn’t kneel before the book that he believes in? Cyril has just called Hypatia a witch. For Orestes to kneel before the book in that moment wouldn’t just show that Orestes has faith in the bible, it would also show that Orestes agrees with everything else that Cyril has said.

This is a magnificent example of how religion can be twisted and poisoned depending on the person teaching and interpreting it. The logic becomes faulty if you believe every word out of the mouth of a sermonizer. When Orestes is escorted out of the crowd, he screams over and over again “I’m as Christian as you are” while stones are being hurled at him. Does this mean he is or isn’t a Christian? Is it Christian to stone someone who doesn’t believe the same way you do? Should any religion tolerate such a thing if we believe the words of their holy books?

Questions like these arise while watching Agora, but that is not to say that the film is just a polemic about why religion is evil. This wasn’t made by Christopher Hitchens (although I’d love to see that film). I think the target in Amenabar’s film isn’t really religion at all, it’s intolerance. D.W. Griffith may have used the title first, but it would be an apt one for this film as well. The character of Hypatia is not so much an atheist as she just doesn’t have an interest in religion. She is more fascinated by science. At one point a character says that she believes in “nothing” and she replies, “I believe in philosophy.” This scene illustrates perfectly the misconception about atheism, that if one doesn’t believe in god then one doesn’t believe in anything. Later on in the film, she tells someone, “you don’t question what you believe. I must.” That’s essentially the rallying cry of every agnostic in the world.

But look, this is not just a “smart” film about people in large rooms discussing religion (although there are a few scenes where that does happen). Rather, this is a film with epic scenes of battle and bloodshed. It might not have Russell Crowe fighting a tiger in an arena, but there are some pretty monumentally cool scenes here. It’s just that while other sword-and-sandal flicks might revel in the destruction in order to get the audience to say “oh cool, he just stabbed that guy,” this is a film that doesn’t glorify battle.

When it becomes apparent that the pagans will have to fight the Christians, Hypatia protects her students, saving them from the horrors they surely would have faced. And as audience, we are thinking, “thank goodness.” In any other film that is set in this era and deals with these circumstances, we would have been focusing more on those that did fight and what heroes they were. In Agora, the heroes are the ones who don’t react violently.

It’s not a perfect film. The love stories are not essential to the film, although it helps to deepen Hypatia as a character. She is someone who eschews the love of men. In fact, at one point she hands one of her suitors a cloth with her menstrual blood on it. She cannot understand how there could be any beauty in love since there is no beauty in her menstrual cycle. But the love story also is used to introduce us to the character of Davus who becomes radicalized when he becomes a Christian. He is used as a way of showing the audience how these things happen; he’s a slave, but he has more than so many others and he can help people by giving them the bread he has (although never mind that the bread isn’t his to give).

Rachel Weisz is truly astounding in this film, as she often is. Hypatia is not an easy character to play; she must be idealistic yet intelligent, a dreamer but a realist. Weisz is such a wonderful presence, so charismatic and likable that although her character is not as fleshed-out as she could be, she is still imbued with a certain vigor and humanism. The film doesn’t portray her as martyr, though, which makes sense because atheists don’t believe in martyrs anyway. Rather, they show the hypocrisy inherent in her secular humanism: she might be nice to her slaves, but she still has slaves. Hypatia is a good person overall, but she’s also a slave-owner.

The acting by the rest of the cast is all pretty spot-on, with Oscar Isaacs proving to be quite a commanding presence.

SPOILER WARNING

The final scene between he and Weisz is heartbreaking: Orestes is trying to figure out a way to beat Cyril, who has taken over the city. It is decided that everyone must be baptized, including Orestes’ closest advisor Hypatia. Hypatia refuses to do this and Orestes tells her that if she would just do it, then they could figure out a way to defeat Cyril, to which she replies, “Oh, Orestes. He’s already won.” Wow. Just wow. This scene is the most note-perfect illustration of why we cannot give in to religious intolerance and fundamentalism. But, truly, watch Weisz and Isaacs in this scene and how they make us feel what they are going through. Terrific work.

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