***SPOILER ALERT****
I had high expectations of this film, part of a reaction to the nonsensical idiocy that was The Clash of the Titans. I wanted to enjoy an epic that portrayed the ancient world as it was. It hasn’t been a disappointment – I think it’s a must see, simply because of what it portrays. Moreover, the way the film brings Alexandria to life is splendid, though I would have loved to see a scene set in the infamous lighthouse, just for the hell of it.
One thing I will warn others of though is that it is rather a brutal telling of the events surrounding the fall of the Empire and the rise of Christianity within Alexandria, so this isn’t for the faint hearted.
The film follows Hypatia, a philosopher and teacher and it opens with her musing about the force that allows our feet to stay on the ground and brings a cloth floating down; centuries ahead of Isaac Newton we see. She is talking about it with her group of students in the ‘agora’, the Greek word for a place of assembly – think Roman forum. Rachel Weisz is brilliant in the lead role, with a perfect balance of scholarly, wide eyed excitement and heavy eyelids filled with disappointment and veiled horror at what is being allowed to happen in the city. Alongside her story, the story of Alexandria unfolds, where the Christians begin to brazenly mock the previous pagan religions (I despise using the word ‘pagan’, simply because of its connotations; I’d rather use a word that doesn’t denote such disrespect). This incites the followers of the Egyptian religion and so ensues a horrible back and forth which sees the Christian majority driving out the Jews and banning the practice of anything ‘pagan.’ It makes for very uncomfortable viewing. I think I must have had a past life around that era, because the scene where the Christians run into the library – the most famed library in the world at that point, for it held knowledge untold, where Hypatia and her father study - and destroy it and its scrolls, really hit me in the chest. I had to hold back cries of outrage (yes, I know it’s a film but it did happen and the film scores points for being able to pull me in so relentlessly). My heart wept as Hypatia cried over the loss of the library.
