As I was told in an introduction of the movie, Agora is the
story of the struggle between people who wanted to know more, and the ones who
wanted to know less. Agora was the old name of Alexandria, and when the story
begins, the pagan religion dominated Agora. Pagans worshipped multiple gods.
They had gender equality and the right to question their beliefs. Obviously
they are the ones who wanted to know more. They promoted science and philosophy
and as a result acquired great wisdom and culture.
It was then that Christianity started flourishing in Agora.
When they increased their number, they started hammering their beliefs on
pagans. They outnumbered the pagans, killed many and forced the rest to
baptise. They also burnt the pagan library which had knowledge the Christians
could only dream of achieving at that point of time. That is because the
Christians didn’t know if the earth was round or flat. They were blinded by
their belief. They interpreted the Holy Scriptures and justified their barbaric
behaviour. They killed all the ones who stood against them. Even the Jews were
no spared. They stoned the women involved in philosophy and branded them as
witches. They showed absolutely uncivilised behaviour.
The story revolves around a lady who was the daughter of the
leader of pagans. She figures out that earth and other planets moved around the
sun in elliptical orbits; disproving the belief that earth was the centre of
the cosmos. Science, philosophy, love, violence, and history have been
brilliantly linked to the script.
This movie is highly controversial for a reason. Quite a few
reasons actually. We equate culture and civilisation to the west, this movie
shows otherwise giving us the not so cultured heritage of the western society. This
iconoclastic work of art shatters our misconceptions on western culture.
Even though this may just be a story, I found no results on
paganism in my encyclopaedia and the dictionary defined pagan as godless.
Ironically, the Christians abused pagans for worshipping multiple gods. Even
the very MS WORD on which I am typing now wants Christian to start with a
capital C but don’t want paganism to start with a capital P. According to what I
found on the net, this story has bulk of truth in it.
People killing in the name of religion wounded my emotions
and this film invoked deep thoughts in me. I would recommend this movie to all
people who wish to have their mindset corrected.
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