Love movies. Love epic stories. Love ancient history (I was amazingly fortunate in my education — I got ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman history in junior high school, along with Latin, Shakespeare and the kind of geography where the test is “draw a map of Africa on a blank piece of paper and then fill in all the countries”… but I digress. Ah well, why should today be any different?)
And here is the trailer for the ancient-history-epic-movie Agora, directed by Alejandro Amenábar (whose work has always struck me as marvelously attuned to both the “big picture” of a film and the internal landscapes of the characters in it), and starring the brilliant Rachel Weisz as — wait for it — Hypatia of Alexandria.
And it’s Saturday! How much better does it get?
Enjoy your day.
I am so with this. Hypatia is representative of all that is tragic about the conflict between truth and fear, knowledge and ignorance, learning and oppression. And Cyril is the epitome of unrestrained religious arrogance.
Besides, I think Rachel Weisz is absolutely Mmmmm.
I can hardly wait to see this. Civilization in all its messiness was, is and hopefully will be. As a civilization we have undervalued women. Women were saying no to that then, and they’re still saying it. It’s always the artists among us who resurrect the old narratives and make them moving and topical. My hat is off.