STUDIO-ONLINE

by Los Angeles filmmaker Veronica Aberham

Assemblage artist, Dominique Moody, was born to a life of struggle, with her parents working to shelter their children in a Jim Crow South, and determined not to allow racism to undermine their children’s growth and potential.

Dominique was encouraged early to prize opportunity, to develop an independence of mind and spirit, to grow into a person of intense drive and persistence. She is a storyteller, sharing with us her life’s progression, her strengths, and the mojo that powers her life-trek, a trek that ignites, or re-ignites, in all of us dreams of better things.

She was marked as an artist at an early age and was invited to study in various workshops at the Philadelphia College of Art, and Pratt Institute in New York. She then was awarded a scholarship to UC-Berkeley (1986-91), afterwards pursuing an eclectic creative path. In her 30’s, faced with failing vision and the prospect of no vision, she returned to Berkeley to further her education. With loss of vision her usual art forms, drawing and painting, shifted to assemblage work.

Whatever the form, the story and its telling are rooted in her own life and experience. Her newest work ‘the Nomad’ exhibited recently at the California African American Museum, draws on the personal challenges of childhood, of artistic growth, of the loss of vision, and, finally, of an artistic vision gained: a vision that encompasses the interplay of the no-nonsense tough-times and the playful fantasy of child-artist, the vision of a seasoned and mature artist. She shares here an entire life-journey, from childhood to the evolved Nomad, free from bondage, free to shape and create and share her life, her art.

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For additional information please visit the artist’s website at: www.dominiquemoody.com

Darling Jim by Christian Moerk (Holt pbk, 2010)

Reviewed by Cindi DI Marzo

Prophets and madmen use the same door to people’s hearts, don’t they? They always grab hold of your hope and start turning the handle until it gives, whether you want them to or not.

–A warning from Gatekeeper

Celtic mythology contains a mind-boggling cast of otherworldly spirits: good, bad, mischievous and those with irresistible charms marking them as tricksters and thieves. Such shapeshifters endanger all who encounter them on back roads and in the forests of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwell, Brittany and Galicia. To many inhabitants in rural areas today, the voices of wee folk and Druids echo in unconscious creeds and consciously upheld superstitions. Still considered power places, standing stones in sacred circles draw natives, tourists and true believers.

Former Warner Bros. movie executive Christian Moerk set his first novel published in the States, Darling Jim, in one such locale, Castletownbere, a small fishing port in County Cork, Ireland. Sexy, leather-clad Jim Quick rides into town on a fiery red vintage motorcycle, initiating a chain of grisly events. His first victim: 24-year-old teacher Fiona Walsh, who falls head-over-heels for his implied danger, impish smile and x-ray eyes. A sensible girl when compared to her renegade younger sisters, twins Róisín and Aoife, Fiona can swear and drink the best of ‘em under the table. In the Irish language, “Fiona” means “fair”; Róisín, “Dark Rose” and Aoife, “joyful.” Their names sum up the girls’ physical features and obvious personality traits: Fiona the girl next door obsessed with Egyptian history; Róisín the tattooed loner addicted to shortwave radio; and Aoife the flower child earning her bread as taxi driver. Beneath the surface, each sister resists easy definition; just when you think you have their “type,” unexpected facets emerge. Fiercely loyal to each other, they share a finely tuned sense of justice. When push comes to shove, most who know the Walsh sisters would bet against their adversaries. That is, before Jim Quick arrives.

A foe equal to Walsh sister solidarity, Jim, as Fiona describes, “was a force of nature there’s no name for yet, unless that word is ruin, fury and seduction.” A male Shéhérazade, or seanchaí in Irish tradition, Jim’s storytelling finesse rivals his movie-star looks. Unlike the Persian queen from Richard Burton’s 1885 The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, though, Jim does not spin tales to preserve life. He creates intricate webs of malice, murder and mayhem. If Moerk’s novel sounds like yet another gothic thriller, it is–with a twist. Like Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s Shadow of the Wind, Darling Jim surpasses genre and, with enough press and word-of-mouth, could rank among these predecessors on bestseller lists. In fact, Fiona, Róisín and Aoife are close cousins, separated by a few intervening countries, to Larsson heroine Lisbeth Salander. As strong women, they define Girl Power for the 21st century.

Raised in Copenhagen, Denmark, Moerk convincingly captures the quaint setting, quirky dialogue and prickly characters of small-town Ireland. His ability to write like an insider is one marvel among Darling Jim’s many wonders. While working for Warner Bros., Moerk traveled to Ireland to oversea shooting of Neil Jordan’s films Michael Collins and The Butcher Boy. (Jordan set his latest film, Ondine, in Castletownbere. For www.studio-online.com’s review of Ondine, click Film on the menu bar). In an essay closing the book, Moerk explains that Darling Jim germinated from three seeds: his visit Castletownbere, a village “spilling over with hidden stories”; a kid on an old motorcycle; and a newspaper reporting deaths of three women from County Kildare, apparently from starvation. Similarly, Moerk’s novel develops in layers, with diverse threads winding like twisting country roads through narrative accounts and diary entries. A master storyteller himself, Moerk reels in his audience with multiple perspectives and clues judiciously doled out like crumbs in the forest. Along with readers, the novel’s anti-hero Niall, an aspiring illustrator daylighting as a Dublin postal clerk, follows the trail. Niall believes that if he can draw the scenes related in Fiona’s and Róisín’s diaries, he might solve the many puzzles presented in them.

Moerk packs Darling Jim with fairy tale imagery (wolves lurking in the woods; a wicked stepmother figure; a wheel chair-bound wizard) and magical symbols (twins, keys, a bride). References to legendary figures old and new (Amenhotep, Jesus, Elvis, JFK, Tom Cruise, Obi-Wan Kenobi) and ubiquitous features of modern life (cigarette butts, phone cards, Hello Kitty stickers) have an unsettling effect, as if time stood still while barreling forward at breakneck speed.

Despite Gatekeeper’s warning broadcast by radio to a scheming Róisín, Moerk leaves little doubt about Jim Quick’s identity. Neither prophet or madman, Quick is a cold-blooded killer. The true mystery at the heart of Darling Jim pivots on a question as old as the hills. And the answer to it solves the greatest mystery of all: love. Fiona never stops wondering whether Jim will kill her or love her. It’s a fine line between love and violence, and she cannot fathom the distance.

Surprisingly, Moerk’s gothic tragedy spins gold from a rum deal. Although the cards are stacked against the Walsh sisters, readers should place their bets wisely.

The Mori Art Museum presents the long-awaited new exhibition “Sensing Nature: Yoshioka Tokujin, Shinoda Taro, Kuribayashi Takashi”! Consisting of newly commissioned works by each of the three participant artists, the exhibition attempts to stimulate our sense of nature through large-scale installations with visitors’ physical experiences with their entire bodies.

Kataoka Mami, curator of “Sensing Nature” states:

“They give abstract or symbolic expression to immaterial or amorphous concepts as well as natural phenomenon such as snow, water, wind, light, stars, mountains, waterfalls and forests. Their ideas of nature suggest that it is not something that is to be contrasted with the human world, but that it is something that incorporates all life-forms, including human-beings.Their works hint that we have inherited this all-encompassing cosmology deep in our memories and in our DNA…”

In August, relay talk “Nature Session” will offer an opportunity to appreciate the essence of the works by Yoshioka Tokujin, Shinoda Taro and Kuribayashi Takashi which lies in the artists’ perception of nature.

* The schedule will be updated regularly. Check the website for new events.

Mori Art Museum
53F Roppongi Hills Mori Tower,
6-10-1, Roppongi, Minatoku,
Tokyo, Japan, 106-6150
Web: mori.art.museum

Michael Werner Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of major works by Marcel Broodthaers, one of the most important artists of the last century.

Born in Brussels in 1924, Broodthaers began writing poetry at an early age and was associated with the surrealist movement in his native Belgium. For nearly two decades he continued to write, struggling in poverty and obscurity, before turning to the visual arts at the age of forty; he explained in the catalog for his first exhibition, in 1964: “I, too, reflected whether I might not sell something and find some success in life…” His first artwork, Pense-Bête , consisted of several copies of his final volume of poems embedded in a mound of plaster. Embodied in this dramatic gesture are the concerns that would fascinate Broodthaers for the rest of his artistic career: an unending interest in wit and wordplay, coupled with an affectionate critique of the conventions of contemporary art and its institutions. Broodthaers died in Cologne in 1976, leaving behind an immensely rich and influential body of work that continues to speak to subsequent generations of artists.

The exhibition at Michael Werner brings together a selection of major works from throughout Broodthaers’ relatively brief career. Highlights include Dites Partout Que Je L’Ai Dit (Say Everywhere What I Have Said), a work exhibited only rarely since its creation over three decades ago. Conceived and first exhibited by Broodthaers as a room for his 1974 exhibition Eloge de Sujet at Kunstmuseum Basel, it is considered one of the most important of Broodthaers’ installations, encapsulating his practice through a playfully provocative juxtaposition of word and image, poetry and object, language and art. Also included in the exhibition are a major mussel panel and one of the only paintings of the artist.

Marcel Broodthaers has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions internationally, including retrospective survey exhibitions at Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and the Tate in London.

Marcel Broodthaers: Major Works is on view from 9 September through 13 November. Fall gallery hours are Monday through Saturday from 10am until 6pm. Please contact the gallery for more information.

Michael Werner Gallery
4 East 77th Street
New York, NY 10075
Phone: +1 212 988 1623
Web: michaelwerner.com

Ondine (2009; 2010 U.S. release)

Directed by Neil Jordan

Reviewed by Cindi Di Marzo

Water spirits have beguiled humans–at least in folklore and literature–for some time. Their origins resist definition. Whether known as elementals, nymphs, mermaids, nixies, melusines, ondines or selkies, they portend tragic destinies for themselves and those they ensnare. Fifteenth-century Swiss/German physician Paracelsus discussed them quite seriously. Composers, choreographers and artists have created legendary operas, ballets and beautifully illustrated picture books featuring them, particularly during the Romantic period; German author Baron Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s 1812 novel Undine is one notable example.

Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan’s (Michael Collins; The Crying Game) 2009 film Ondine merges varying mythic strands but focuses on the selkie, or seal maiden, a creature found in Scottish, Irish, Welsh and Icelandic folk tales. Sightings of selkies continue to be recorded, most frequently off the coast of the Orkney and Shetland islands where seal mythology seems to have begun. Selkies, it is said, can shed their seal coats and live on land. In some tales, she (or he) marries a human, bears children and then must leave without warning, recalled beneath the waves; in other stories, a human hides or burns the coat, as dramatized in the 1994 John Sayles film The Secret of Roan Inish. Stranded, these sea creatures express their longing for the waves as a low keening song.

In Jordan’s film, one day fisherman Syracuse (Colin Farrell), otherwise known as “Clown,” hauls in his nets with no catch. Failure does not surprise him–Syracuse is a pretty luckless fisherman. But snagging a beautiful, half-drowned woman (Polish actress Alicja Bachelda) gets a rise out of this laconic chap. A former alcoholic, Syracuse hasn’t been on the wagon long enough to trust his eyes. After reviving and calming her, Syracuse tells the woman he will get help. Terrified of discovery, she begs him to hide her. Syracuse doubts he can do this in Castletownbere, a tiny village on the Beara peninsula in southwest Ireland. Until he has a better plan, he takes her to his mother’s cottage built into the cliffs overlooking the sea. Not long after, she is spied by Syracuse’s daughter, Annie (Alison Barrie) who, like Syracuse, comes to know her as Ondine. The term derives from the French word for “wave.”

Immediately, Jordan engages viewers’ sympathy with Syracuse’s self-deprecating, droll questions and replies. Dublin native Farrell’s (Crazy Heart) portrayal of the prince in clown’s clothing should win him more fans. Bachelda as Ondine sparkles as a cross between tragic heroine, lucky charm, Super Woman and super model. Despite these near-perfect performances, Barrie’s Annie steals the show. Wheel chair-bound, awaiting a kidney transplant, Annie has the great misfortune of two alcoholic parents. Taunted by schoolmates, she spends her days whizzing around in her electric chair, scouring library shelves and developing an OED-caliber vocabulary. Perhaps the most precocious of the many cheeky young characters in film today, Barrie’s Annie should grate just a bit. She doesn’t because this know-it-all metes out wisdom sparingly, and only to those she deems worthy.

After Annie and Ondine become fast friends, Annie reads everything she can about selkies in folklore studies and old picture books she secures from the library. Not one to take anything on faith, Annie acquires the facts she needs to convince herself and Syracuse of Ondine’s magical existence. In one affecting scene, Annie ponders the puzzle Ondine presents while tracing an illustration English artist Arthur Rackham made for a 1909 edition of Fouqué’s story. Such touches are Jordan’s stock-in-trade. A master of brevity, Jordan limits action and dialogue to essentials, each move and expression acted as a symbol of character; each word spoken the necessary one. For instance, Jordan inserts Syracuse’s confessions (the village doesn’t have an AA) at pivotal moments to bring the fantasy to ground. Guaranteed to draw wry smiles, his scrupulously honest revelations merely earn sad head shakings and patient lack of judgment from Stephen Rea as long-suffering priest. Their friendship poignantly conveys the gift of acceptance–scars, faults and misdemeanors, the rose, its thorns and everything in between.

Although far more mature than Syracuse and her mother, Maura (Dervla Kirwan), Annie remains a child. Underneath her stoical acceptance of life’s disappointments, Annie dares to believe that Ondine will stay and she will get better. Yet she is prepared for a different ending and, when the fiction unravels, Annie adjusts. After all, she might still get her wish. Ondine is a fairy tale that hardcore realists can appreciate. Even in troubling times, wishes come true.

The Grand Manner by A.R. Gurney

Directed by Mark Lamos

Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, New York City

June 2-August 1, 2010

Reviewed by Cindi Di Marzo

American playwright A.R. Gurney’s work immerses audiences in Northeastern WASP culture. Much of his material draws from his background in this milieu. Born in Buffalo, Gurney graduated from St. Paul’s prep school in Concord, NH, then attended Williams College in Williamstown, MA, and the Yale School of Drama. While teaching at MIT, he began to write plays. In 1981, he debuted The Dining Room, a comedy of manners exemplifying Gurney’s career-spanning terrain. Like Jane Austen, Gurney understands that close readings of social microcosms yield universal truths; with ample doses of wit and wisdom, Gurney dramatizes hidden agendas and blatant pretensions. Yet barbed as his humor can be, Gurney brings an insider’s affection to his characters and their foibles.

Longtime Gurney colleague writer Romulus Linney described his fellow Yale graduate as bold and adventurous, referring to Gurney’s interpretations of theater conventions.1 For example, Gurney’s The Fourth Wall (1992), soon to be staged by TheatreWorks at The Fourth Wall Theatre in Upper Montclair, NJ, challenges the invisible barrier, or “Fourth Wall,” between actors and audience. In this play, Gurney conflates the “real” and the imagined by eliminating the fragile boundary between the stage and the seats. The Fourth Wall also expresses Gurney’s doubts about his career direction at mid-life and a playwright’s influence beyond the footlights.2

In June, Gurney’s most recent work, The Grand Manner, opened at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, directed by Mark Lamos.3 A poignant, compressed drama laced with signature Gurney humor, The Grand Manner recounts a brief meeting between the young Gurney, called Pete, and a theater legend. At the time, Gurney was at St. Paul’s. His father insisted he become a physician, but Gurney toyed with pursuing a less secure career choice. In February 1948, he traveled to New York with a ticket for a performance of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra at the Martin Beck Theater, starring First Lady of the Stage Katharine Cornell.4 The Berlin-born Cornell was raised in Buffalo. Wherever she went, whatever location she chose for a residence, Cornell considered Buffalo as her home. When Gurney’s grandmother writes to Cornell to arrange a meeting with the boy post performance, Cornell readily accepts. Gurney’s father believes the visit will squelch the theater bug but, again, the boy has other plans.　

Cornell’s legendary status derives from two tributaries: her never-failingly gracious, well-bred presence, and her pioneering efforts to revitalize American theater. “Grand” in the noblest sense, Cornell had every advantage that wealth and prominence affords. Unlike Gurney, whose family disparaged the theater, Cornell’s father was an amateur director and, later, managed a local theater. When Cornell put on backyard plays, he encouraged the child’s passion. By the time her mother died in 1915, Cornell had already set her sights on Broadway. With inherited money, she moved to New York. Soon Cornell’s glamorous looks and engaging personality began to win leading roles.

Dubbed “Kit” as a child because of her boyish features, Cornell cultivated interior qualities. She understood the human need to be recognized, as well as the appeal of good manners and humility. To her, audiences were not faceless crowds of ticket holders. Her words, smiles and tears were for individuals. They knew it and became devoted fans. For admirers from her hometown, Cornell’s welcome extended to backstage visits for the sharing of news and memories. She opened some of her plays in Buffalo, and whenever she appeared there while on tour, Cornell performed her most convincing role: hometown girl.

In 1921, Cornell married actor/director Guthrie McClintic. The production company they formed put little-known playwrights to work and exposed audiences to rarely performed works (including those by George Bernard Shaw and Shakespeare). They employed many actors who became legends, including Orson Wells, and they gave work to others who might otherwise have forsaken the stage. McClintic directed his wife in some of her most famous projects; for example, Candida (1924), The Brownings of Wimpole Street (1931), Lucrece (1932), Alien Corn (1933) and St. Joan (1935).

In Gurney’s flashback, Pete’s visit comes at a juncture in Cornell’s career. In her mid fifties, she feared but accepted the fickle nature of celebrity.5 Connecting her fate with the decline of live theater Cornell dreaded being pigeon-holed as a tragedienne, too “grand” to play grittier parts. A wide-eyed Pete decides to be accommodating and readily critiques her performance as Cleopatra. Too long protected from genuine criticism by her husband, her faithful personal assistant, Gert, and the notable reviewers who counted her a friend, Cornell hungers for truth. Without it, she tells Pete, theater is dead. Television and film, she cautions, capture dead performances. Even at the end of her career, when producers offered few parts, Cornell scrupulously avoided both. Roles, she believed, were created between actor and audience.

Exuding charm, Kate Burton (The Constant Wife; The Elephant Man) plays Cornell from all sides: confident professional, aging has-been, vain celebrity and humble Buffalo gal. As Pete, Bobby Steggert (Ragtime) is suitably awe-struck, the perfect blank-slate against which the others reveal their secrets. Gurney gives his ironic, quick-shot jokes to McClintic (Boyd Gaines) and Gert (Brenda Wehle). Gaines (Gypsy; Twelve Angry Men) as McClintic alternates with increasing rapidity from sophisticated producer to flawed human being. Wehle’s (Pygmalion) Gert organizes Cornell’s life with military precision, gruffly advising Pete on the ways of the world from a Broadway perspective. Hints of a magnanimous spirit and love for Cornell will endear Gert to audiences, while a pathetic seduction of Pete punctures McClintic’s pomposity.

The Grand Manner might be considered a coda to Gurney’s Buffalo Gal (2008), also directed by Lamos. Buffalo Gal examines the predicament of aging film star Amanda, who returns to her hometown Buffalo for a revival of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Working under a director who represents the unsung stalwarts of regional theater, Amanda begins to note uncomfortable parallels between her own life and that of her character, Madame Ranevsky. Both go home hoping to recapture a magic that exists only in memory. In reality, home is already lost to them. In the end, Amanda decides that Hollywood’s promises trump live theater’s rewards. With The Grand Manner, Gurney allows another Buffalo Gal to tell a story in which live theater is the victor.

 

1 “A.R. Gurney” in BOMB (96/Summer 2006): http://bombsite.com/issues/96/articles/2838. Linney met Gurney in the 1950s at Yale.

2 Opening on September 24, 2010, the TheatreWorks production features Gurney’s The Fourth Wall and Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound. For more information, go to: http://www.4thwalltheatre.com/index.html

3 The Grand Manner opened at Lincoln Center on June 2, 2010, and runs through August 31.

4 Cornell was so fashioned by New Yorker critic Alexander Woollcott.

5 Born in 1893, Cornell gave her birth date as 1898. She died in 1974.

Agora (2009, released to the U.S. market June 2010)

Directed by Alejandro Amenábar, screenplay by Amenábar and Mateo Gil

Reviewed by Cindi Di Marzo

At its most dramatic, political ambition and religious fanaticism have destroyed entire civilizations. Yet these dangerous bedfellows also threaten culture at subtle levels, no more so in the ancient world than in our own. Director Alejandro Amenábar’s latest film, Agora, works both ends of the spectrum. Set in a Roman-ruled Alexandria torn by religious hatred between pagans, Jews and early Christians, Agora centers on the life, work and death of fourth-century Neoplatonic philosopher, mathematician and teacher Hypatia (ca.360-415 AD). On the surface, Agora is a bloody exposé of the death of reason. Under the blood and gore, the senseless savagery and massacres, the director orchestrates a human drama fueled by fear, hunger and greed. Digging to the roots of violence, Amenábar reminds viewers that, indeed, we have not come so far.

Born in 1973 in Santiago, Chile, just prior to Pinochet’s coup, Amenábar was politicized at an early age. His mother lived through the Spanish Civil War, and after the coup his Chilean father moved the family to Madrid. With poor scholastic achievements behind him and a talent for film and music, Amenábar switched course.1 Now known for his fever-pitch psychological thrillers, he has been dubbed by reviewers as Alfred Hitchcock’s successor. Like Amenábar’s 2004 release The Sea Inside (Mar adentro), based on quadriplegic Ramón Sampedro’s 28-year crusade to legally terminate his life, in many ways Agora is atypical for his work. With The Sea Inside, the director risked a more elastic treatment than he used in his previous, highly controlled horror films.2 Viewers get to know Ramón (Javier Bardem) through two women who love him. In a 2004 interview published in Venice Magazine, Amenábar spoke of Ramón’s writings:

“He talked about loving, but not possessing someone. To be able to accept not owning a person. At the same time, he felt that he owned his own life, but he also didn’t mind getting rid it.”3

Similarly, Agora considers Hypatia through the people who love and admire her. Otherwise, she remains closed, yielding little evidence of an emotional life. That said, the beautiful Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) has plenty of passion for her studies, the contents of the last great bastion of learning in Roman Egypt, the Alexandria library, and the Chinese puzzle presented by Ptolemaic astronomy. While her students (young pagans, Christians and slaves) pine over her and noble pagans wrangle with Christian persecutors, Hypatia literally has her head in the clouds. She submits to no god or God, champions learning as the salvation of humanity, and believes that true justice is logical and egalitarian. The only axiom she never questions, “More things unite us than divide us,” reverberates through the film.

Ironically, Hypatia contemplates a universe far beyond human imaginings, symbolized by Amenábar’s cutaways to expansive clips of the cosmos; but her personal experience is narrow, limited to the sheltered environment provided by father Theon (Michael Londsdale). Theon encourages her to forsake marriage and motherhood for scholarship. Another irony: Hypatia’s beauty sits uncomfortably with her scrupulously honest (i.e., blunt) speech. For example, when student/suitor Orestes declares his love she responds with a handkerchief soaked in menstrual blood. Could she be less clear? Could he be less offended? Nevertheless, despite his lighthearted approach to lessons, Orestes remains devoted to Hypatia’s mind as well as her body.

As the film progresses Amenábar stacks irony, contradiction and opposition. Orestes’ counterpart, slave Davus (Max Minghella), thinks deeply about Hypatia’s theories and offers lines of inquiry that impress her. Where Orestes can state his feelings, Davus must hide them. Where Orestes not only survives her rebuff but renews the chase, Davus bristles when Hypatia refers to his slave status. Like other slaves, he is ripe for the Christian’s promises of power and bread for the meek and hungry. Perhaps more so, with wounded pride igniting his resentment. Viewers will not wonder at his vulnerability to recruitment by charismatic street preacher Ammonius (Ashraf Barhom) for the black-robed Christian militia, the Parabolini.

Amenábar sets Davus’s conflicted religious zeal against Orestes’ politically motivated conversion when Orestes becomes Roman prelate. Against these, the director places Synesius of Cyrene’s conventional, if peaceful, faith. Eventually, former Hypatia student Synesius becomes a powerful bishop. The devotion of all three of her formal pupils attests to Hypatia’s truly noble character but cannot save her. She is sacrificed to Christian extremism and martyred for the truth. She will not forsake reason, even when it fails. She has pledged her life to the agora, the open-air forum for trade–ideas as well as commodities. Like Sampedro in The Sea Inside, she feels she fully owns her life and its disposition.4

Weisz (The Lovely Bones; The Constant Gardener) plays Hypatia to perfection. Suspicious of emotion, Hypatia discounted its value to intellectual discourse and reasoned judgment. Hypatia can shed tears: for her father, bludgeoned in the agora; for the scrolls burned by the rabble; and for Orestes’ and Davus’s compromises. In the film’s most powerful scene, Orestes attends Hypatia while she ponders the lack of love in her life. Clearly capable of feeling loss, Hypatia then easily turns her thoughts to her astronomical quandary. Is her mistrust of emotion a subterfuge? Due to lifelong training? Or a well-reasoned choice. As Hypatia would no doubt counsel, viewers should judge for themselves.

1 Amenábar has scored most of his films. Dario Marianelli scored Agora.

2 Amenábar wrote the screenplay for The Sea Inside with Agora collaborator, Spanish director Mateo Gil.

3 The interview is available at: http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2010/01/alejandro-amenabar-and-sea-inside-open.html

4 For a lyrical fictional portrait of Hypatia, readers should acquire a copy of Ki Longfellow’s moving Flow Down Like Silver (Eio Books, 2009).