Agora, resist intolerance

Agora is the new movie by Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar, just presented out of competition at Cannes. We are in 400 AD and Alexandria in Egypt is the cradle of Hellenism, the home of the famous library, the city of philosophers and scientists. Like Hypatia, astronomy, mathematic, philosopher, famous teacher of the school of Alexandria. But the city is swept by quivers of intolerance: Christianity became the state religion and does not admit the existence of other philosophies.

Cyril, the Bishop sends his private militia, the paralabans to kill Ipazia. The philosopher will be massacred, his body tear to pieces. It's the symbolic episode of the end of secular culture that philosopher were trying to save from religious intolerance. Christians have become masters of the Roman Empire and were determined to destroy any culture that was not theirs.
The director, author of The Others and The Sea Inside, conceived the film as an eulogy for freedom of thought, focusing on the figure of a woman, played by Rachel Weisz, who represents the achievements in secularity, feminism and scientific culture of the Hellenistic, soon to disappear in the face of the mounting tide of religious fanaticism. Hypatia is killed, the library of Alexandria destroyed, and Western culture will have to wait 1000 years to rise again, with the humanism and the Renaissance.

"A film against totalitarianism and fundamentalism," said Amenabar, set in an era that in many ways it's similar to ours. An empire in crisis and near a radical change, with the blind certainty of religion that spread on the masses and people eager to seize power ready to exploit it, and justify any violence in the name of faith. Not to forget that any religion that wants to impose its ideas by force is a threat to humanity.

Francesco Defferrari

On account of the self-possession and ease of manner, which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not unfrequently appeared in public in presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more. Socrates Scholasticus

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