Agora Netflix Film



Agora Netflix Film

The Decline of the Roman Empire

The film Agora revolved around the character of Hypatia, who was the Lady Philosopher of Alexandria. This film was written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar, and Mateo Gil assisted him in writing the film. Agora is an English language film having an international cast. The film is based on religious extremism and has clearly depicted the early Christians to be murderous and intolerant and that is why it caused anger in some European countries that are Catholic-based.

The film has its starting placed in the AD 391 in location of Alexandria, Egypt (Vrettos, 2001). Christianity has been a legal religion since the time of Constantine the Great and early 4th C, and had been the religion followed by the Emperors, except Julian the Apostate. Constantine had placed efforts to instigate unity by means of adopting Nicene Creed in 325, and the next seven decades saw brutal and violent infighting in what became the Catholic Church later on. Pagans emerged as a dwindling yet powerful group in 391 while the religious force ranked on number three comprised of the Jews. The Emperor of the Roman Empire, Theodosius I reigned from Constantinople and outlawed all worships carried out by people which were non-Christian. Theophilus, who was the Bishop of Alexandria was involved in a campaign to clean the church from all sorts of heresies and spread Christianity all around the city (Vrettos, 2011).

Theon was a pagan mathematician actively involved in writing and teaching along with his daughter Hypatia who was a philosopher. Constantine adopted and extended Christianity as the official faith of Empire and Hypatia was caught up in the struggle between the Christians who had happily embraced this faith and the traditional pagans who were being pushed to the side of the society and suppressed.

Science in the Film

In the film, Amenábar demonstrated science theories in the film and showed that Hypatia challenged her students to elaborate an astronomical anomaly, and strongly urged them to become brothers of each other even though they had religious differences. She even resorted to rebuffing student who was amorous by sending him a handkerchief that was stained with her blood from menses (Justice, 2010).

Hypatia's character in the film is illustrated as a keen astronomer and she made instruments such as the astrolabe. The film reflected Aristarchus' heliocentric model, placed in the 3rd Century BC, which was about how the revolved around the sun and was not restored in the West until Copernicus (Mahoney, 2009). It was used a theme for Hypatia to analyze and prove.

The film showed no evidence whether Hypatia agreed or disagreed to the model. However, the empirical way of experimenting and thinking that Hypatia followed in the film did not exist for many centuries after that. On the other hand, some scholars argue that empirical thinking had existence but Neo-platonism proved to be antithetical to its use (IEP, 2012). Moreover, it can be observed that Hypatia did not think about science in ...