Wednesday 17 June 2009

Coming Soon: Agora

This should spark some interesting debates when it’s released later this year.

Depending on who you ask, the story of Hypatia (here played by the lovely Rachel Weisz) and the destruction of the ancient library in Alexandria in the 4th century AD is either one of the most egregious examples of how religious hegemony can wreak destruction on civilisation, or … no. That’s about it.

Any other views are more or less apologetics for Christianity and the vague hand-waving that goes along with proclamations that they’re not really that bad anymore.

I’d take that view slightly more seriously if we hadn’t seen Dubya’s Christian troops stand passively by while the National Library in Baghdad was destroyed in 2003.

It’ll be interesting to see how the movies portray Cyril (a.k.a Saint Cyril of Alexandria) given he’ll undoubtedly be the villain of the piece. After all, he’s still considered one of the Fathers of the Catholic Church.

With a bit of luck we’ll get a Papal condemnation and picketing from idiots who haven’t bothered to see the film, but are blindly following the edicts from the pulpit. No great stretch that, of course.

Let the games begin.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sadly enough this film distorts history itself not only defacing Christianity and Christian figures. No historical writings have ever proven that the Library of Alexandria was burned down by the Jews and Christians. Research should be made into the real story of this time.

Making money in film making is not everything.