The Chills-Inducing Trailer for 'Agora'
Filed under: Drama, Religious, Trailers and Clips
Suffering through films like Troy, which is akin to being cinematically stabbed in one's Achilles' Heel, it's easy to be wary of the ancient period pieces. All too often, epic legends crumble due to Hollywood's obsession with spectacle -- falling to epic looks rather than an epic heart. But just sometimes ... a film can have both.I will be writing more about the film later, but for now, I implore you to hit the jump and watch the trailer for Alejandro Amenabar's Agora. This is the sort of trailer every film needs: It balances exposition (helped along by a great narrator rather than deep-disembodied typical trailer voice) and explanation with passion -- outlining what exactly the film is focusing on before exploding into a rising crescendo that will tap into your skin and unleash the goosebumps and chills.
Agora focuses on Hypatia (Rachel Weisz), a female scholar from Alexandria in 370-415 AD. Well ahead of her time, she was a well-respected philosopher dedicated to studies of math and astronomy. Christianity was spreading through Egypt, however, and it was only a matter of time before her incredibly advanced status (for a woman in that era) became her downfall.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-28-2009 @ 5:41PM
Tom said...
Carl Sagan told the story of Hypatia's life. I think it was part of an episode of his cosmos series on PBS. She was amazing. This could be a great movie
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8-28-2009 @ 5:49PM
ThePlaylist said...
"Carl Sagan told the story of Hypatia's life."
That pretty much sums up the experience i saw at Cannes, zzzzzzz.
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8-28-2009 @ 5:54PM
esvee said...
I really don't want to be a downer... but I wasn't impressed. It just seemed like a lot of others out there. Sorry.
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8-28-2009 @ 6:04PM
Liam said...
I personally liked Troy. This trailer didn't do anything for me...sorry.
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8-28-2009 @ 9:11PM
Holly said...
And what exactly is wrong with Troy?
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8-28-2009 @ 10:09PM
John said...
The West is the only civilization in history that loves self-flagellation. Even Tacitus in his day complained about the depravity and laziness of the Romans and the heroic nobility of the brutish barbarians; he should have asked Ovid about whether it was pleasant to live among the barbarians.
At least this movie shows that Egypt and all of the Middle East was Christian before the Muslims took it over, so the Crusades were just about regaining what had been taken by force. No?
Oh, wait! That's not the point of this movie. It's all about that the Christians in Egypt were so bad that they deserved to be conquered by the Muslims.
Ironically the Arabs tell a story about the conqueror of Alexandria asking his Caliph what to do with the books, The Caliph is said to have replied that if the books agreed with Mohammad's teaching , then they were superfluous and unnecessary and if they didn't they were heretical. Either way, the library was not needed.
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8-28-2009 @ 10:16PM
Monika said...
Having seen the film, I can tell you that it is most certainly not a story about how "the Christians in Egypt were so bad." It's about Hypatia and the religious turmoil of the period. Both the Christians and the pagans they overtook are shown in both a positive and negative light; both show a lot of heart as well as some truly terrible actions.
8-28-2009 @ 10:04PM
Wexler said...
Didn't blow my mind or anything, but I'd agree that it looks a whole lot better than Troy.
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8-29-2009 @ 1:25AM
NP said...
I like Amenabar, and I like Weisz. I'm there.
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8-31-2009 @ 1:04PM
yaksplat1 said...
At what point were the chills supposed to kick in?
Maybe i dozed off....
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9-01-2009 @ 4:43PM
Dee said...
"And what exactly is wrong with Troy?"
You mean, other than everything?
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