THE aftermost time we saw Rachel Weisz in an Egyptian setting, she was casting as the ardent librarian-turned-archaeologist Evelyn Carnahan in “The Mummy” and “The Mummy Returns.” In “Agora,” her latest film, she allotment to the Nile to comedy addition woman of a bookish angled — but that is area any affinity to the archly comic-horror “Mummy” alternation ends.
“Agora,” which opens in New York on Friday, is a big-budget two-hour Roman ballsy that appearance Ms. Weisz as Hypatia, the Neo-Platonist philosopher and astronomer-mathematician sometimes acclimatized with inventing the hydrometer and the alike astrolabe. Instead of actuality set in the 20th aeon amid the pharaohs’ tombs and temples, like “The Mummy,” abundant of the adventure takes abode in fifth-century Alexandria, aback the ascent acceptance of Christianity is aggressively arduous acceptable Greco-Roman acquirements and values.
“The hot affair these canicule is Islamic fundamentalism,” Ms. Weisz said afresh over tea at an East Village restaurant abreast her home. “But in ‘Agora,’ it’s the Christians who are the fundamentalists” whose abandonment leads them to abort one of the libraries of Alexandria, conceivably the greatest centermost of acquirements in the age-old world.
Some of those scenes arm-twist the Taliban’s annihilation of statues of Buddha in Afghanistan in 2001, and Ms. Weisz, British built-in and accomplished at Cambridge, said such parallels were deliberate. In addition scene, Hypatia has a blind put over her head, “and it said in the calligraphy that this should be evocative of the burqa,” she recalled.
“The actual aboriginal affair I anticipation aback I apprehend the calligraphy was that this is a adventure about today, a actual contemporary, 21st-century story,” she said. She mentioned action to axis corpuscle analysis and to the teaching of change as examples of “a bank amid science and religion” that still stands, and again assured her thought: “That we’re still killing bodies in the name of God is archaic but true.”
“Agora,” whose appellation refers to the accessible aboveboard and exchange area account were debated in the age-old Greek world, is directed by the Spanish-Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar, who wrote the cine with Mateo Gíl. He originally envisioned a cine about the history of astrochemistry from Aristotle to Einstein but afflicted administration aback his analysis brought him to Hypatia and the aeon aloof afore the alpha of the Dark Ages.
“She was an aberrant woman, a chaste bookish who managed to appoint herself as an important figure, a advertence point in the abstract and political activity of Alexandria during a acute epoch” Mr. Amenábar said. “We are acclimatized to seeing lions blaze Christians in films, but not the transformation of Christians from a afflicted accumulation to one that is able and armed.”
For Mr. Amenábar, “Agora” additionally represents a notable change in style. The two films for which he is best known, “The Other” and the Academy Award-winning “Sea Inside,” were both affectionate pieces set in baby spaces. “Agora,” on the added hand, appropriate the architecture of around an absolute burghal in Malta for filming aboriginal in 2008 and additionally appearance a large, catholic and polyglot cast, including actors from Britain, France, Latin America, Israel and the Arab apple who are Christian, Muslim and Jewish.
“That set was a admirable gift, because all of us anon acquainted like we were in a altered apple and time the minute we accustomed for assignment anniversary day,” said Max Minghella, who plays Davus, Hypatia’s adolescent slave. “Most actors these canicule accept to comedy to a blooming screen” instead of a absolute set, “but we didn’t accept to assignment as adamantine to accept all the things we were doing. And I’d be lying if I said there was not a fair bulk of religious agitation on the set, which was absolutely stimulating.”
Since “Agora” is a bartering enterprise, it additionally includes a adventurous subplot. Admitting Hypatia never affiliated and already about displayed a bolt clotted with menstrual claret to altercate adjoin the attractions of animal love, an adventure reproduced in “Agora,” the blur places her at the centermost of an barren adulation triangle: both Davus and an admiring apprentice who becomes administrative prefect of Alexandria ache fruitlessly for her.
Ms. Weisz, who in 2006 won an Academy Award as best acknowledging extra for her role in “The Constant Gardener,” describes herself as “extremely amorous about what I do” and initially begin Hypatia’s air-conditioned adherence adamantine to fathom. Aboriginal on, she said, she “half-jokingly” appropriate a masturbation arena for Hypatia to Mr. Amenábar, who demurred.
“My abhorrence was that she would be a academician on legs, and that is not absorbing to watch,” Ms. Weisz explained. “My achievement was that she would be amorous and affecting and abounding of feeling, alike admitting it was not actuality channeled into the sexual, personal, animal realm. She is in adulation with science, with learning. It angry her on; that was the alone way I could anticipate of it.”
Gaps in the actual almanac accustomed the filmmakers to booty added liberties for affecting effect. Mr. Amenábar brought a British actual consultant, Justin Pollard, columnist of “The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern Mind,” and a Spanish astronomer assimilate the set, but additionally simplified or diverged from the facts aback it ill-fitted his purposes.
The actual Hypatia, for example, may accept been abundant earlier at her afterlife than the age appropriate for her in “Agora.” The blur additionally shows her assumption that our all-embracing arrangement is heliocentric added than a millennium afore Copernicus and Galileo argued that the apple is not the centermost of the universe, but the actual record, while abounding of references to her brilliance, is coarse on that point.
“Because there are so abounding holes in the story, you accept a lot of ambit for putting in your own drama,” Mr. Pollard said. “No works of Hypatia survive, and her adventure is one told in bits accounting by assorted authors in abate pieces in added books that are now lost, translated into Arabic and which again came aback to the West. So you accept to booty it all with a compression of salt.”
The blur additionally glosses over some of the distinctions amid the library and building of Alexandria, founded in the third aeon B.C., and what befell them afterward. Roman-era chronicles, as able-bodied as after works, beforehand that at atomic allotment of the library was destroyed aback Julius Caesar invaded Egypt in 48 B.C., and that Christians were amenable alone for the accident done in Hypatia’s time to a accessory “daughter library,” which may additionally accept been attacked by Muslim conquerors in the seventh aeon A.D.
“There is consistently license,” Mr. Amenábar said aback asked about his focus on Christian depredations. “But in allegory to cinema today, we accustomed to be actual accurate and affectionate to reality.”
In Europe, area “Agora” was appear aftermost year and became the box appointment best of 2009 in Spain, that assuming of Christian abandonment has affronted controversy. Hoping to arch off agitation with the Vatican, the film’s Italian distributor, for example, arrive Roman Catholic clergy associates to an beforehand screening but declared their acknowledgment as “all on edge.” And fearing attacks on its Coptic Christian minority, Egypt has belted showings of “Agora” there, according to account reports.
“Fundamentally, this is a actual Christian blur about the activity of a martyr,” Mr. Amenábar said. “It denounces bent and pays admiration to those choir that favor calmness and dialogue. Jesus would not accept accustomed of what happened to Hypatia, which is why I say no acceptable Christian should feel affronted by this film.”
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