Whoever came up with the screenplay handbook for How The Ancients Must Have Talked has a lot to answer for. Why must all characters in antiquity set films talk like stilted cod philosophical puppets, spouting lame aphorisms (classic Agora example "We are all brothers") or wisecracks about how Rome just ain’t like it used to be? Obviously it’s difficult to write dialogue for the early A.D.s without being fanciful or hopelessly anachronistic, but surely there must be a better compromise than these lapses into A-Level drama filler speak. It’s a pernickety point, as Agora predominantly avoids many of the clichés of toga epic, producing a beautifully rendered vision of a collapsing civilization and the violence of the religious fundamentalist world-view.

Set in fourth century Alexandria, Agora follows the life of Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) the female mathematician and philosopher. Hypatia’s studying and teaching is set against a backdrop of religious turmoil and power struggle, as hard-line early Christians rail against the Roman polytheistic religion and the ‘pagan’ texts which fill the Library of Alexandria. To the film’s credit, Hypatia’s intellectual journey is given as much screen time as the conflicts engulfing the city, and Alejandro Amenábar, Agora’s director and co-writer, admirably avoids the temptation of giving Agora a straightforward love interest. There are certainly men interested in Hypatia, and two characters in particular vie for her romantic attentions; Orestes (Oscar Isaac) and Davus (Rupert Evans). These men begin the film as Hypatia’s students in the Platonic school, and ultimately become key players in the warring factions which emerge in the city. Hypatia however, despite their repeated advances, remains unswerving in her dedication to her philosophy, knowing the circumscription which marriage must inevitably bring. Hypatia’s ceaseless purpose is to ‘simplify the heavens’ and in this ambition at least she is happily rewarded; as a result of dedicated scholarship she becomes an early proponent of the heliocentric model of the universe, preceding Copernicus and Galileo.

Rachel Weisz, who I usually find frustratingly wide eyed and wholesome, like an intelligent but earnest Girl Scout, does turn in a good performance here, making the best of even the most wooden lines. Evans as Davus, her slave and sometime pupil, is genuinely fearsome in his impotent rage, frustrated ambition and unrequited love. Oscar Isaac is an actor to watch; his performance was utterly brilliant, compelling and controlled.

The cinematography is also worthy of mention. Although much of the film is composed of unremarkable crowd shots of scrabbling merchants in a market place, or the echoey interior of Hypatia’s home, there are beautiful sweeping shots where the camera pulls out to show the swarming populous getting slowly smaller, as we are shown the entire city, then the country, then the globe, suspended in a never-ending sea of black. These contextualising shots place Agora’s bloodshed in a vast, empty, uncaring universe, but they also, by leaving the sounds of Alexandria’s slaughter still playing over the shots of space, insist on the importance of human suffering.

I would never normally have chosen to see Agora but it is an interesting film which eschews the traditions of the blockbuster, presenting a steadfastly intellectual female lead, a drama which relies more on ideas than chariot races, and does so without giving in (or hardly) to portentous worthiness.