Film has the potential to be so engrossing perceptually for
the viewer-auditors that the medium can engage the human condition at a deep,
unconscious level. At that level, the subconscious protects us in the games we
so seriously play. If done well,
film-making crafts a coherent and complete story-world into which the voyageur can
be temporarily lodged before returning to the ordinary world that now looks
somehow different. The subtle perceptual change can result from part of the
viewer’s subconscious having been made transparent, or realized, while in the
film’s story-world. As concerns the religious domain, I contend that the medium
has only touched the surface in holding a mirror up to ourselves. This is not
to say that more anti-religion movies, such as Last Temptation of Christ, are the answer; neither are more palliative,
apologist films, like The Ten
Commandments and The Greatest Story
Ever Told, the way to greater self-awareness for homo religiosis. On account
of their un-questioning, one-dimensionality (even when viewed with 3D glasses!),
these films are more alike than their respective leitmotifs would suggest. Most
importantly, none of these films raises penetrating questions that assume the
validity of “the other side.” Agora does.
The film evades easy categorization as anti-Christian or even anti-religion,
and is thus able to effectively touch on the human condition beneath its denial
and hypocrisies. My question here is how Agora transcends the predictable
patina of reactionary films enough to widen our collective consciousness at the
expense of hypocrisy and denial at the expense of the true spirit of religion.
The key revolves around both subjecting religion (and particular religions) to
critique and drawing on religion to supply an anchor. That is to say, religion
is both truth and its antithesis.
Nietzsche advocates approaching truth itself as a problem
rather than as something whose validity is held to be beyond question (i.e.,
sacred). Gandhi famously remarked that he used to think that truth (i.e.,
revelation, as in the Vedas) is God but came to realize that God is truth. To
Gandhi, this meant that revelation contrary to non-violence is not of God. A
film can subject truth itself as a
problem (rather than as a conveniently partisan given) and enhance, thereby,
human awareness of just what we are up to when we take ourselves as religious,
whether in self (or group) identification or conduct. Once a film gets a grip
on a truth and makes it a problem rather than a pallid backdrop, you can bet
the river Styx in the human unconscious will be stirred, lapping over its banks
as it tries to order its new-found energy gained from the antiseptic of
unabashed sunlight.
Agora is based on historical
events.[1]
The director’s attention to visual accuracy, based in part on the ruins at
Pompey, heightens the illusion of realism and the coherence of the
story-world—both of which add to the credibility that is necessary to subject
truth as a problem. Most importantly, the film holds off in taking sides in the
religious disputes and related power-struggles, and thus avoids the pitfalls
that go with an overwhelming partisan agenda. Moreover, the film tempers itself
from becoming an outright anti-religious flick by highlighting hypocrisies from
the vantage-point of “the other side” (i.e., religion) rather than the absence
of religion in the human condition.
To be sure, the film will settle on the Christian patriarch
Cyril as the antagonist—bent as he is on gaining power in cruel—and thus
hypocritical—means. For once a person assumes the mantel of “the end justifies
the means” to legitimate one’s dubious acts, the declining slope can be quite
slippery indeed, and in a subtle way that can easily evade the person’s notice.
Moreover, a bubble of pride can surround the denial rendering the hypocrisy all
the more damning.
Lest it be concluded that the film finally reveals itself as
an anti-Christian polemic, however, the film’s indictment is hardly
straightforward. Commenting on the film,
Alejandro Amenabar, the director, distances his film from easy categorization
by partisans as anti-Christian or anti-pagan by pointing out that the pagans were
the first historically (as well as in the film) to lash out in violence. “I really tried not to take anyone’s side,”
Amenabar explains. “For most of the movie, you don’t know who is good and who
is bad. This is because there are good people and bad people everywhere, among
Christians, pagans, Jews.”[2]
Agora is thus not as anti-Christian
as it might seem in retrospect, and elements in that direction do not define
what the film is ultimately about. The distance from overt religious partisanship
gives the film the credibility necessary to take on, and thus make transparent,
some of the important aspects of homo
religiosis that are typically hidden (i.e., in society’s blind-spot).
At the cusp of the ravaging
conflict, Olympius, the pagan high-priest is incensed. Christians—including
most notably their patriarch, Theophilus—are just outside the temple/library
complex mocking statues of the gods, including most prominently the locally
popular god, Serapis. Utterly unbecoming of the maturity typically expected in
an elder official, Theon, a mathematician-philosopher and director of the
library, backs up Olympius in answering that the insult must be answered (with violence).
Edward Gibbon describes Theophilus historically as “the
perpetual enemy of peace and virtue, a bold, bad man, whose hands were
alternately polluted with gold and with blood.”[3]
In the film, the bishop stands before a crowd, making fun of a stone statue because
it cannot move and talk (as if statues of Jesus could). That Theophilus and his
successor, Cyril, presume to know the mind of their god is all the more
astonishing, considering how childishly they behave as religious leaders. Later
in the film (and historically), Cyril incites his protector monks into an
anti-Jewish, anti-woman (via Paul’s letters), and anti-pagan frenzy, resulting in
the clerics’ murder of Hypatia, an astronomer/mathematician who has the ear of Orestes,
the Roman prefect. Historically, the monks skinned her alive. Fortunately, the
director went with a sympathetic suffocation followed by the monks stoning her
dead body. Love thy enemy is nowhere to be seen in the film, except perhaps
when Hypatia frees Medorus, her Christian slave who had just almost raped her
before stopping himself.
With their perspective lost or severely undermined even by
high principles, the religious leaders on both sides illustrate what can happen
when people take their respective religions too seriously. . Generally speaking,
the warring religious parties presume they could not possibly be wrong in their
chosen routes and how grave the insults are. It is as if any otherwise viable check
or “escape value” is somehow circumvented in the human brain from acting a self-correction
on the mind itself of a homo religiosis.
Hence, religion in the hands of a human can be quite dangerous in that things
once lit can easily get out of control without the parties involved having a
clue.
Accordingly, the film approaches truth as understood by human beings as a problem rather than as sacred
(i.e., beyond the reach of questioning). That is to say, the presumed
infallibility and the related loss of perspective are to be made transparent by
the film. Perspective and the related
attitude of humility is the film’s anchor.
For example, after the first round of violence over the
insults to the gods, the pagans are burrowed inside the massive temple-library complex
and the Christians are outside, desperately wanting in to retaliate against the
pagans and burn the library’s thousands of “pagan” texts. Mortally injured by one
of his Christian slaves, Theon admits to his daughter, Hypatia that the insults
against the gods did not have to be answered with violence after all. Looking
at his injured co-religionists lying around him, he wonders aloud, “How could I
have been so wrong?” Before the fight, he had been so certain that the insults
must be answered, only to be left astonished at how utterly mistaken he had
been. It seems as though religion in human hands is particularly susceptible to
this sort of blindness, and rarely open to regaining perspective in a way that
shows the person as Creature rather than Creator—as so very partial rather than
whole. Put another way, Theon’s self-deprecating acknowledgement of having been
so very foolish stands out in the film as a rarely invoked remedy for religious
arrogance and presumptive knowledge. No such bar is presented in the domain of
philosophy, with Hypatia continuously questioning her own thinking on the shape
of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and Orestes admitting when still one of
her students, “Perhaps I’m just simple-minded.” Why is it that questioning and
self-effacing recognition are so rarely pursued in religious matters?
The sheer rationalizing of bad behavior under Christian illustrates
just how toxic homo religiosis can become.
“I was forgiven, but now I can’t forgive,” Medorus admits to Ammonius, one of
the fighting Nitrain monks, after Jews had attacked and killed a group of the
monks. Answering him, Ammonius tries to assuage the younger man’s internal
angst as if a recalibrating internal struggle were something to evade at all
costs. “Jesus was a god, and only he can show such clemency.” That Jesus
preaches forgive seven times seven and
love your enemy to his followers rather
than just for himself has somehow eluded the monk. Yet he is nonetheless
confident enough in his own theological interpretation to assure the former slave,
“God wants us here doing what we’re doing.” With such insight into the mind of
God radiating out of mere mortals, truth itself scarcely has any room, and is
barely even noticed, but in a lowly former slave and two pagan philosophers.
Religion itself is on trial in this film. That the
standpoint assumed is religious rather than secular makes the indictment all
the more credible and severe. For
example, Medorus’s recognition of his own lack of forgiveness and Theophilus’s
reading of part of the Sermon of the Mount—blessed are those who thirst after
righteousness—serve as anchors in the film from the Christian standpoint. The
excesses in the name of the religion are thus to be measured not from outside in,
but, rather, from what the religion could
be were its adherents willing to pause, submit their chosen religious
ideals and conduct to the rigors of self-questioning, and be willing to be
wrong about what they presume they cannot be wrong about. In short, by subjecting
themselves to the problem of truth (and themselves as virtual fonts thereof),
the stringent hold of denial can, at least theoretically, be broken. However,
the religious consciousness must be open to the realization of having gone awry
under the cover of masked hypocrisy. Were the film to assume a wholly anti-religious
attitude, the defenses of denial would easily gain the upper hand out of sheer
defensiveness over impending doom (for the religion). So the religious basis of
the film—established for example in Theon’s wonderment at his own stupidity
concerning what the gods want as well as in Medorus’s admission of his refusal
to forgive—is critical to religious truth being subjected to critique through
the medium of the film.
Perhaps the film’s best contribution to expanding human
consciousness of religiosity comes in exposing hypocrisies, lapsed judgment,
and warped thinking. For example, whether
from a category mistake—treating knowledge as a substitute for (and thus threat
to) divine revelation—or the faulty assumption that the presence of statues of
deities in the library mean the scholarship must laud the gods and excoriate
Christianity—the overzealous Christians ransack the library’s ancient
scholarship.
Apparently, Theophilus had not gotten the memo. Many early
Christian theologians interpreted the Biblical account of creation aided by
Plato’s cosmology in the Timaeus.[4]
More than two hundred years before Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria based his
belief in the immortality of the soul on the Book of Psalms and Plato’s Republic on the final judgment.[5] In fact, the second-century bishop of
Alexandria argues, “Plato all but predicts the history of salvation.”[6]
Justin Martyr comes even closer in linking Plato’s work to Christianity by
seeing Socrates as a Christ-type and forerunner in being unjustly put to death
in defense of Logos, or reason (Jesus being the preexistent Logos incarnate).[7]
Similarly, Clement considered Homer’s Odysseus tied to the mast of a boat while
passing the alluring Sirens as a foreshadowing of Jesus.[8]
Clement read widely in classical Greek literature even as he considered himself
as a faithful pupil of Jesus.[9]
For all this drawing on “pagan” sources, Theophilus still felt the need to
destroy the library in Alexandria, even if that meant acting contrary to what
earlier Church fathers would have wanted.
In the film, the needed lens of perspective comes into play as
the camera-shot pulls back from above to show the Christian monks clad in black
robes scampering about like tiny ants running ancient scrolls to hastily-built
fires. The true smallness of the species truly registers, however, only if the
viewer recalls that each ant-like creature is presuming infallibly to know the
mind of God.
Hypatia’s fixation on the stars also furnishes a benchmark
for such, much needed, perspective. She allows herself to consider the
possibility that the Earth is just one “wanderer” among others that revolve
around the Sun. The panoramic camera-shots of Earth, moving slowly in, down to
Alexandria and closer still to the library, show visually just how very small
(and unimportant) our playpens truly are. We scamper around like ants in our
daily lives, yet we presume nonetheless to act on behalf of our deities.
As “the instigators” were ensconced in the temple/library
complex as the Christians waited pensively outside, an old man befitting Jung’s
wisdom archetype pierces the grim veil of smoke and mirrors to see into the
profound universe that surrounds us. Befitting the simplicity in the stars, the
old man high up on a wall speaks of Aristarchus (c. 310-230 BCE), whose
heliocentric model places the Earth and the other “wanderers,” or planets, as bodies
orbiting the sun. Yet for all the beauty and easy of such heavenly simplicity,
even Hypatia has trouble holding onto it, moving on to analyze elaborate
alternative explanations that are—as Aristotle wrote of Plato’s system—“beautiful
but false.”
Similar to Hume’s thesis in his Natural History of Religion that the human mind has trouble holding
onto naked notions of divine simplicity, elaborations and divine contortions
pervade through all the partisan warfare in the film as if inevitably, resulting
in Christian monks stoning the dead body of innocent Hypatia. Even the sheer
tolerance for such hypocrisy attests to just how presumptuous and self-serving we
human beings can be in religious affairs even as we convince ourselves that we
are acting on lofty principles.
During the fighting that ensues to “answer the insult” to
the gods, one of Theon’s Christian slaves shouts over to the old man, “I’m a
Christian!” Without any recognition whatsoever of the blatant contradiction,
the slave attacks Theon by smashing his head with the butt of a sword. The sad implication
is that Jesus had somehow failed, at least with respect to his preached message
of turning the other cheek and loving enemies. It is as if the Christians would
gladly nail even Jesus to the cross if he crossed them.
Indeed, in his audio commentary on the film, Amenabar says
he views Hypatia as a Christ figure. The director says he has “a feeling that
Hypatia, somehow, shared characteristics with Jesus. She had disciples, she
would evoke feelings of brotherhood, she would preach tolerance, and
eventually, and unjustly, due to political reasons, she was martyred and
murdered.”[10]
Actually, as in the case of Jesus, religious reasons were also in the mix.
In the film and historically, the Nitrian monks are
supporters and enforcers, of Cycil’s anti-pagan message (e.g., that Hypatia is
a witch). In the film, Hypatia puts herself out there by walking in public to her
house. A small group of the monks corner her, and, quite ironically, take her
to the bishop’s church in the library complex. Out of love for his pagan former
master, Medorus, who earlier admits he does not know how to forgive, suffocates
her while the other monks are out scrounging for stones. When they return, they
stone Hypatia (presuming her to still be alive). The role of Hypatia as a
Christ figure becomes very important to understanding the significance of the
murder—and through it, the state of Christianity itself—both in the film and
historically (she was actually skinned alive). In killing a Jesus figure, the blind
monks effectively discredit their own faith without having a clue of having
done so. Like light making its way to Earth from a distant star, the news of
the fallen stars had not reached those stars themselves.
In conclusion, Amenabar effectively evaded a polemical film by
keeping the viewers from being able to identify the antagonist early on. Presumptuousness under the subterfuge of
religion is the true culprit—the real antagonist. We are human, all too human, scampering
around like ants in our “agendas,” and yet in spite of our smallness, and
because of it, we presume to know the mind of God. We easily substitute “I
know” for what is actually belief, and yet we presume that we cannot be wrong
about what we think we know. Put another way, our religions may speak volumes
more about us than anything transcending the limits of human cognition and
perception and thus inherently ineffable. Interestingly, Hypatia was a
neoplatonist in line with Plotinus, who had taught that ultimate reality is
beyond the reach of the human mind. His writing anticipates Kant’s distinction
between the noumenal (i.e., things in themselves) and phenomenal (i.e.,
appearance). We mere mortals seem to have an intractable difficulty staying put
in the sand box of appearances instead of wandering around informing others of
the truth, saying “I have the truth; you just have your opinion.” That truth
eludes all of us somehow escapes our landscape of possibilities; we don’t even
recognize the stench of our own hypocrisy, and yet we take it for granted that
we know even the mind of God. Agora completes
the circle, or ellipse, by showing us just how dangerous arrogance perched on
stilts can be during a flood. By all rights, our innate sense of omniscience
should be underwater, and yet it presumes virtual infallibility. Agora provides cognitive and visual
perspective that can cut the stilts down to size and thus enable a more
authentic homo religiosis to finally emerge from the dark miasma of empty
pride.
[1]
According to the director, this “movie is very much based on true stories.” Alejandro
Amenabar, Commentary on Agora.
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire (New York: The Modern Library, n.d.), Vol. 2, p. 57.
[4]
Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the
Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (Yale University Press: New
Haven, CT, 1985), p. 61.
[5]
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata,
5.14.
[6]
Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries,
p. 44.
[7]
Ibid. See Justin Martyr, I Apology 5, 46;
II Apology 10.
[8]
Ibid., p. 42.
[9]
Ibid., p. 38.
[10] Amenabar,
Commentary.
