amenabar - entrega oscar por mar adentro
amenabar - entrega oscar por mar adentro -visita PAKOMUSICALATINO.COM
Movie Review – “Agora”
When was the last time you saw a film about the shape of the cosmos, mathematics, philosophy, mankind’s place in the universe, belief versus enquiry, the vandalism of stored knowledge, and zealotry versus rationality?
“Agora” is about all these things. It’s also an epic of the kind people rarely make any more, and – in various ways – a love story.
Alejandro Amenabar directed it. Regular filmgoers may remember him as the writer and director of “Open Your Eyes”, “The Others”, and “The Sea Inside”. He’s a filmmaker who is certainly unafraid to take on big ideas. “Agora” may be the most intelligent epic I have ever seen.
It’s about a pivotal, and disastrous historical event – the burning of the library of Alexandria, said to have contained “all the knowledge of the world” up to that time. And it’s about the ascent of Christian dogma over freethinking science. It’s the moment when the Roman-dominated pagan world became the Christian-dominated medieval era. It’s the beginning of “the dark ages”.
At the centre of the storm is Hypatia (Rachel Weisz). She is the daughter of the library’s head Theon (Michael Lonsdale), and is in love with the pursuit of knowledge. She is a philosopher, and teacher of a group of devoted students. She considers being a woman a nuisance, and has no intention of ever making herself subservient to a male. This does little to stop men from being interested in her, particularly her student Orestes (Oscar Isaac) and her personal slave Davus (Max Minghella), who is also being increasingly drawn to the new religion of Christianity.
The story covers a period of many years, but as it opens in 391 A.D., the pagan but knowledge-seeking people of Alexandria are being increasingly hectored by a group of fundamentalist Christians called the Parabolani. Led by a powerful speaker named Ammonius (Ashraf Barhom), the Christians are determined to grab for themselves all the power they can. They, like fundamentalists everywhere, do not want any alternative to their religion to exist. Ammonius not only gives fiery sermons, he even walks on fire to prove his point. His followers go even further, pushing one prominent Roman into the flames to prove his Gods are less powerful.
...
