Usually director Alejandro Amamba’s film will not disappoint, and the same is true for "City Square Agora", especially the second half of the film can be watched with heart. The audience was completely conquered.
This time Amamba brought the experience of the Egyptian female scholar Hypatia (Hypatia, also translated as Hypatia) in the 4th and 5th centuries AD to the screen, and based on this, he unfolded a desolate and sad story. Scroll of history. If you only focus on the audience of love entanglements, it would seem too narrow. This film is full of majestic, solemn and mournful epic temperament, as if going back to the dark and bloody page in the long river of history, bringing religious fanatics and individuals The rightsists' trampling, obstruction and destruction of history and civilization remain on the film in an extremely grand and sophisticated way, and stay in people's hearts, as if a kind of vigilance and reflection.
At that time, the city of Alexandria had a strong academic atmosphere. The well-collected Alexandria Library was a symbol of science and knowledge at that time. Mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, and representative of the Neo-Platonic School, Hypatia, the daughter of the curator With outstanding talent, wisdom and beauty, he devoted his life to the collection and correction of ancient scientific civilization, and constantly researched new discoveries, and disseminated knowledge to his students.
In the age of intellectual enlightenment, Alexandria was also in an atmosphere of religious fanaticism and ignorance, and it was destined to be inevitable. This prosperous and magnificent city is full of turmoil and anxiety. The residents are mixed. Although Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Jews share the city, there are sharp contradictions among people of various religious beliefs. I often fight for life and death. I wanted to fight back against the rampant Christian polytheism, but unfortunately it was dealt with by a partnership between Christianity and Judaism. The two groups destroyed and burned polytheistic gods and buildings, killed and wounded polytheism followers, and almost destroyed the library. Later, Christianity and Judaism fought again. Christianity, which had grown stronger in the previous riot, launched a bloody massacre of Jews, and finally ended with the surviving Jews leaving Alexandria.
In the eventful autumn, Hypatia, who has no faith, or only believes in philosophical knowledge, tried his best to protect the books in the library, protect the inheritance of civilization, and protect human lives. When polytheism deals with Christians, she protects students who believe in Christianity. When Christian mobs slaughter Jews, she dared to question Cyril, the Christian bishop of Alexandria. After the Jews left, the politically ambitious bishop Cyril began to target science and power. The astronomy that Hypatia studied was obviously the opposite of Christianity.
The cruel side of religion stems from its lack of self-confidence and its inability to justify it, so it can only use violence and blood to seal the eyes and ears of true knowledge. When people were instigated by religious enthusiasm to the point that they lost their senses, a rare female scholar in history became a woman who died miserably. Although the death treatment in the film can be regarded as alleviating the suffering of the victims, in reality, Hypatia was not so lucky. She was dragged to the church by Christian mobs. They stripped her clothes and all her hair. Then use a sharp oyster shell to scrape off her flesh piece by piece. Finally, she threw her trembling limbs into the raging fire... After her death, her large collection of books was burned to heat the water in the public bathroom.
Civilization is dead. The tragedy of Hypatia is a tragedy of an era, and even more a tragedy of civilization. The wheel of religious brutality ran over her weak body, and her death has been defined as the "disappearance of civilization". It symbolizes that after her death, Alexandria gradually lost its first-class scientists. The famous American atheist Mosley once said that the death of Hypatia means "the demise of the classical world."
There are two men who admire Hypatia in the film. One is her student and later Admiral Orestes (played by Oscar Isaac). Cyril wants to control the entire city of Alexandria, so he has to remove or Using the governor, Orestes is the meat on the cutting board. Orestes is considered a loyal follower of Hypatia, but this noble child still chose to seize the straw that survived at the last moment. When Hypatia faced Orestes’ exhortation, she calmly said: "Cyril has won." This shows that she has understood that she is now isolated and helpless. She walked out of the hall and said that she didn’t need it. When guarding, she showed that she was ready to die at any time.
Slave Daus (played by Max Minghella, son of the late director Anthony Minghella) is another man who admired Hypatia. He was once a slave of Hypatia. He could not show love and chose Christianity to let him Get rid of the status of a slave, but can no longer face the former mistress...Max Minghella puts Daus’ affectionate and contradictory mentality in place. In contrast, Rachel Weisz’s Hippati Ya appears to have a single personality. She performed the intellectual beauty of female scholars, the desire for true knowledge and the courage to defend the truth, but did not reveal her characteristics as a woman. As everyone knows, Hypatia is obsessed with Researching, not marrying for life, Vichy's Hipatia is indeed a person devoted to science.
The film can be regarded as a major production in recent Spanish films. It costs a lot of money and has a magnificent scene. There are many big scenes of religious fighting. This time, Amamba has demonstrated his ability to control and schedule the complex scenes of grand subjects. The presentation of the film also has a sense of personal experience, and the audience seems to be on the scene, experiencing the crazy age of blind movement. And some scenes in the film give people a sense of calm and onlookers. For example, whenever civilization is destroyed, when Alexander City is tragically poisoned, and after Hypatia's tragic death, the film adopts a bird's-eye view—with the tragic vicissitudes of life. The music, the camera zooms out a little bit, jumps out of the city buildings, floats above, and then is a bird's-eye view of the entire Alexandria, and even some perspectives seem to come from the firmament of the universe, as if to question-what is the meaning of Hypatia’s death. What kind of influence does it have on the great city of Alexandria, and what kind of effect does it have on the progress of world civilization?
The city square witnesses the rise and fall of a city, and human beings have been repeating many similar tragedies and tragedies, and have repeatedly made stupid mistakes, strictly speaking, they have never stopped.
{About Hypatia
in History} In the era of the Great Library in Alexandria in the 4th century, the beautiful and intelligent Hypatia (370-415 AD) was one of the world’s top mathematicians and astronomers at that time. One, when she was 30 years old, she became the academic leader of the neo-Platonian school of philosophy, and she became famous all over the world. Later, she taught philosophy and mathematics in Alexandria Port until she was persecuted to death by Christianity.
Hipatia’s family was very knowledgeable. Her father was the famous mathematician and philosopher Cyon (Theon). Hipatia helped her father revise Ptolemy’s "Encyclopedia of Astronomy" and Euclid’s "Original Geometry". ". With their revisions and corrections, the "Original Geometry" became the final version, and she also supplemented Diophantus's "Algebra" and Apollonius' "Conic Section" alone.
Cyril became the archbishop of Christianity in 412, and the political struggle between him and Orestes, the governor of Alexandria, also intensified. At that time, due to the rise of Christianity and the stronghold of Alexandria at the southern tip of the Mediterranean, the church and the Roman nobles wanted to lead the ideological power and control the power of this place. Therefore, the struggle between Christianity and the Roman Empire was extremely fierce in Alexandria.
Believing that reason is the only source of true knowledge, Hypatia used scientific rationalism to expose the hypocrisy of Christian doctrines. This was hated by the Christian Church. In addition, she had close contacts with the Roman nobles. The Christian Church always regarded her as a thorn in the eye. . One day in March 415, on the way to teach, she failed to escape the persecution of the Christian church and became the victim of a sensational religious persecution of science.
In order to commemorate the first female mathematician recorded in history books, later generations named a crater on the moon "Hypatia Mountain" or translated as "Hypacia Mountain".
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