How far does historical accuracy matter in a piece of art (e.g. film)?... Apparently the film has a lot of historical inaccuracies
Negative portrayal of Christianity (and to some extent all religion)
Relationship/conflict between science and religion
Is rational enlightenment a good thing?
Please do comment here & continue the debate
Geoff
5 comments:
I did a little research into the history of this story this morning. While there are things that are clearly fabricated (her discovery of the elliptical orbits would have been impossible as the key evidence of the Sun's apparent size changes would not have been noticeable with the tools she had), many of the events are recorded in historical documents, including one by a contemporary moderate Christian Socrates Scholasticus. There are extracts from this on the Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia
By this account, many of the awful violence portrayed in the film seems to have some historicity. Socrates writes,
"...surely nothing can be farther from the spirit of Christianity than the allowance of massacres, fights, and transactions of that sort."
Bishop Cyril seems to have been an interesting character; on the one hand he does seem to have written some very good theological books, he does have a reputation of being ruthless in pursuit of what he thought was orthodox; other contemporary bishops called him,
"a monster, born and educated for the destruction of the church"
There is documentary evidence that Cyril did give an order for the Jewish population of Alexandria to be evicted in reprisal for the ambush on the Christians one night.
There was some discussion in the group about the film's portrayal of the Christians as one-dimensional thugs, and whether the film deliberately made them look like muslim fundamentalists. Apparently there was a large group of fanatical, violent monks based near Alexandria who were used by Cyril as a kind of militia. The fact that they were in a religious order could perhaps explain their uniform dress. Some of the supporters of Cyril were from a group called the Parabalani, who dedicated their lives to feeding the poor and burying the dead (explaining the black outfits), but who also functioned as a militia and a bodyguard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabalani
It does seem that the church, having recently changed status from being persecuted to becoming the official religion of the empire, became power crazed and lost the plot. Violent acts like this happened again and again, and we should be ashamed - and try to stop being like this any more.
I am far from being an expert on this and would welcome any comment!
The film certainly had a strong anti religion bias.
On a positive note many of the Christians in the film were aware that Cyril's ministry wasn't particularly Christ like. Sadly they didn't do anything about it out of fear. A lesson we can still use in today's church which is all too ready take Bible verses out of context or promote a prosperity gospel in order to make money or put bums on seats.
We cannot be afraid to stand up to the church in a Christ like manner when they put the church first before God. This film does show that if nothing else.
I also researched this film and found the following blog really informative. If you have enough time and energy the previous postings are also a wealth of information. http://armariummagnus.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/hypatia-and-agora-redux.html
It's not surprising that we struggled to find any coherent argument in this film. It felt like a dogs dinner watching it but I was surprised at how adverse my own response was. For what it's worth it was the robbing of Hypatia's real life experience by the director/writer in order to present a fictionalised psycho-sexual wetdream of a woman that incensed.
Isn't it interesting though how regardless of how much violence the film portrayed the director opted out of depicting the actual stoning to death of an actual live/conscious woman when this is the ONE practice which is actually still occuring today.
You can read about the levels of violence and religious tolerance in this short and entertaining history of Alexandria. ttp://m-francis.livejournal.com/159500.html
Thanks for those links Jayne, interesting reading. I do appreciate your point about the way Hypatia was portrayed too.
Craig - I think you're right too - I wonder how we can practically guard against abusing any power we have left as a church?
One positive thing the film left me with was a way of picturing what the early church would have looked like; although its probably not completely correct (!) I hadn't much of a mental picture before.
Post a Comment