Agora (2009)
Directed by Alejandro Amenábar
No — Agora is not especially woke, scoring 23 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Alejandro Amenábar's Agora arrives from 2009, which is to say from a decade whose anxieties were of a different vintage.
Consciousness Markers
Hypatia is a woman of intellect defying gender roles in a male-dominated world, rejecting suitors to pursue science, and the film foregrounds misogyny and her persecution partly for her influence over a man; Weisz herself framed it as relevant to women's ongoing second-class status.
The film carries a cerebral, idea-driven message about religious fundamentalism versus reason and the destruction of classical knowledge, with Amenábar explicitly framing it as a story about the present, though it argues through drama rather than preaching.
A female lead (Rachel Weisz) anchors a historical epic, and the cast includes Middle Eastern and North African actors, but this reflects the natural setting of Roman Alexandria rather than any deliberate modern representation agenda.
The film has been called 'spectacularly anachronistic' for crediting Hypatia with heliocentrism and the law of free fall, and it invents the slave Davus, but its liberties serve a science-versus-faith drama rather than a modern social-justice rewrite.
The master-slave dynamic between Hypatia and Davus touches on servitude and freedom, but race is not a thematic concern of the film.
No LGBTQ+ characters or themes appear anywhere in the film.
No environmental or climate themes are present.
The film's conflicts are religious and political, not economic; no anti-capitalist messaging exists.
No body-positivity themes; the menstrual-rag scene is about chastity and intellectual devotion, not body acceptance.
No neurodivergence themes or characters are depicted.
Why it received this score
Alejandro Amenábar's Agora arrives from 2009, which is to say from a decade whose anxieties were of a different vintage. It concerns Hypatia of Alexandria, a mathematician and astronomer who teaches, reasons, and is eventually dragged through the streets by a mob. The film has swords, sandals, and a sincere belief that the fourth century can be made to speak about the present. Amenábar has said as much himself.
Rachel Weisz carries the whole enterprise, and the film grants her a woman of intellect who refuses marriage, refuses suitors, and refuses conversion. That is a feminist posture, though a stately one, less a manifesto than a portrait. The casting reflects Roman Alexandria honestly enough: Middle Eastern and North African faces populate the crowd, with no modern hand arranging them. The famous scene in which Hypatia presents her menstrual rags to a would-be lover reads as an argument for chastity and devotion to science. It is not a statement about bodies, and we should not pretend otherwise.
What the film does carry is an argument. Reason against fundamentalism, the library against the mob, classical knowledge against the rising tide. Amenábar frames this as a story about the present, and the sermonizing lands with a thud in places. The history bends to the thesis: Hypatia discovers heliocentrism and the law of free fall, and a slave named Davus is invented to watch it all. Race, economic grievance, and the natural world are not the film's concerns. It wants to mourn a library. That is a modest, melancholy ambition, and it mostly succeeds.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
A historical drama set in Roman Egypt, concerning philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria and her relationship with her slave Davus, who is torn between his love for her and the possibility of gaining his freedom by joining the rising tide of Christianity.
Questions about Agora
Is Agora woke?
No — Agora is not especially woke, scoring 23 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Based.
Does Agora have any woke elements?
2 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Feminist Agenda (45) and Lecture Energy (30). On Feminist Agenda: Hypatia is a woman of intellect defying gender roles in a male-dominated world, rejecting suitors to pursue science, and the film foregrounds misogyny and her persecution partly for her influence over a man; Weisz herself framed it as relevant to women's ongoing second-class status.
How does Agora compare to other 2009 movies?
It ranks #41 of the 230 films from 2009 we've scored; their average is 14. The wokest is Home (79).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.