Mercy asphyxiations for everyone!
Agora feels like a weird title for this film, maybe because the attention of the film itself is divided. It's set in Alexandria during Hypatia's lifetime, and Hypatia is nominally our central character (); certainly, she's the only one I really care for. But Hypatia's life is centered around the Library of Alexandria, not the Agora (if "agora" is even the right word for that space in a Roman Egyptian, if historically Hellenistic, city -- given that the filmmakers seem to have done their best to pass at least the Wikipedia test of the armchair factcheckers at home, like me), so I wonder why they didn't simply call the film "Hypatia". Maybe "Agora" sounded cooler, or they deliberately wanted to draw our active attention to the religious and political conflict between pagans, jews, and christians. I'm voting for the latter, and Ashraf Barhom does a great job as the christian rabble-rouser, stealing every scene he's in.
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