If you're not making an anti-Christian rant, you don't blame the Christians for destroying the Library of Alexandria when in fact it was already long gone.

I have yet to see the film, but the screenplay seems to be by George Pell.

As a friend who studied classics said, it tried hard to be "painfully historically accurate" (apart from the suffocation by Davos to avoid Hypatia being flayed alive which could not be put on the screen but was hinted at by the other murderers) to the detriment of plot, but if you are going to make a film many Christians wrongly see as anti-Christian, you cannot compromise the historical truth, or your points are to easily dismissed.

The film makes a point of contrasting the fundamentalist bishop with three Christians close to Hypatia, her students, the fictional Davos (needed for the softened ending) who joins the murderous moral police, the politician who converted for convenience, and the moderate bishop. The basic nature of people is rarely altered by a religion, and it can give them an excuse or reason to indulge their worse or better natures.

It is one of the more impressive films I've seen in a long time, a proper tragedy, good history, a good exposition not only what classical philosophers thought but how they reasoned, and a thoughtful reflection on our times, where any one religious belief can have a barbaric wing. It is a shame it did not have a wider release, but I expect it will do very well on DVD.

As well as the story, some of the cinematography is wonderful - the camera during the library's destruction moving under thrown scrolls, and staying upside down for some time - a visual representation of what was happening to civilization.

the film showed that men and religion are a lethal combination and always to the detriment of women

Probably the only way to see this movie is to buy it from Amazon. No doubt religious cult extremists have pressured the main stream cinemas not to show it. We all expected as such when we saw all the trailers on the ABC movie show and newspapers, the one thing the religious don't like is the truth in the public domain. The day of it's advertised release it just disappeared off the planet. It reminds us of the 7 year Ban, Monty Pythons "Life of Brian" received form the corrupt Bjelke Petersen Govt in Qld. Whether the religious cults will have it's video release sales and rentals receive the same pressure as the cinemas we will have to wait and see. This is a good example of the power of the religious cults in our modern democracy. They can ban advertising on buses, our historic doco movies, ethics classes in our schools etc etc!Almost a theocracy, defiantly not a democracy?
My copy is in the mail from the USA at the moment, at least the religious cults haven't interfered and stopped the mail yet, but I bet their working on it?

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