Alejandro Amenabar comments on "Agora"
Get the News by email
Amenabar’s historical epic “Agora” premiered Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival, introducing audiences to the little-known scholar Hypatia, a brilliant astronomer and mathematician working in a man’s world in 4th century A.D. Egypt.
It’s a relationship between a master and a slave. That’s interesting on a personal level, but also a political and social level, because there were rules that were supposed to stop that from happening.
Those societies (ancient Egypt and Greece) had a very developed civilization in terms of economy and culture, and they thought that could prevent a lot of the problems that other civilizations faced. And what we’re finding today with the recession and everything else is that we have the same systems, and we believed that they would protect us, but it turns out they don’t.
It definitely makes you realize how everything is cyclical, and what they went through then, we’re going through now. We’ve been hearing for a long time that our civilization is due for a fall, and now that seems to be happening. But I don’t think that means we’re doomed. From making the movie, I also see how a society can rise. (Laughs). I don’t know, maybe I’m just an optimist.
With language, it always depends on the story. I thought about making “Agora” in the native language, but the only option would have been to shoot in Ancient Greek or Egyptian. And I think it’s best to leave that kind of stuff to Mel Gibson.
Related posts:
