Some may consider "Agora" sound history, others may label it heresy, but I call it thumping good drama.

The film depicts the early days of Christianity as an era of Taliban-style radicalism, zealotry and violence against pagans and Jews that shakes the foundations of civilization and enlightened thought.

It takes place in the Roman-occupied Egyptian city of Alexandria around 400 A.D. The Empire was on its last legs and Christians, after centuries of oppression, began to persecute others. The agora, long a place for public assemblies, here declines from a forum for free speech into a staging area for fire-walking quackery and public stonings.

Working in English, Oscar-winning Chilean director Alejandro Amenabar ("The Others," "The Sea Inside") makes ancient history turbulent, shooting the urban strife with the you-are there immediacy of a CNN crew. But he grounds the tumult in strong personal drama.

"Agora" is the story of the Roman philosopher Hypatia, a 4th- and 5th-century mathematician and astronomer, and one of the most renowned women in the history of science. Her biographical record is sketchy, but her beauty was idealized in many classical paintings, so Rachel Weisz is a pretty good choice to play her. Stories of her refusal to marry depict her as a thinker whose deepest love was scholarship. Weisz plays Hypatia with the didactic air of a brainy woman puzzled by human irrationality, be it superstitious ignorance or declarations of love.

The film's Hypatia is flawed -- arrogant to her slaves and shortsighted about the political and religious upheaval threatening her world -- yet charismatic, independent and brilliant. She is surrounded by admiring men. Her pagan father Theon (Michael Lonsdale) is in charge of the city's great library and the school where Hypatia teaches; her wealthy, self-confident student Orestes (Oscar Isaac) publicly serenades her; her worshipful slave Davus (Max Minghella) eagerly absorbs her theories about the nature of the cosmos and Earth's place in it.

Yet Hypatia doesn't define herself through her relationship to men, or God -- she's a rationalist. Her great love is advancing knowledge, and she is blinded by it, registering too slowly the changes happening in her city while her head is in the stars. There is a fair amount of antique astrophysics in the film, but this is no dusty lecture. "Agora" makes thinking sexy; Hypatia's theory of a heliocentric solar system is as dramatic as the riots that are the opening act of the Dark Ages. Without realizing it, Hypatia is on her way to becoming a martyr, the last Western scientist for 1,000 years.

As the Christians rise up against pagan control of Alexandria, Hypatia is forced to cease teaching. Davus, moved by the church's charity to the poor, becomes a Christian, finding himself torn between his devotion to his mistress and his commitment to God. Orestes becomes Egypt's governor as tensions between Christians and Jews heat to a flash point. The Christian Bishop of Alexandria, Cyril (Sami Samir), approves an attack on the city's library, destroying all but a few of the precious manuscripts, and a massacre of the city's Jews. Orestes, who converted to Christianity for political advantage, doesn't want to alienate his power base by condemning the tyrannical Cyril. The political complexities and compromises are deftly drawn.

Some viewers may mistake the film for an anti-Christian polemic. It isn't. "Agora" shows admirable and despicable Christians, and it is Davus who performs a heartbreaking act of charity for a character on the point of death. The screenplay by Amenabar and Mateo Gil is harshly critical of religious fundamentalists, not only those who perverted Jesus' teachings, but also pagans and Jews who used violence against their enemies. The message in favor of tolerance and reason is simple, perhaps even simplistic, but important. Several times in moments of rampant violence, Amenabar pulls his camera up to the clouds to look down at rival sects battling like ants, killing each other over beliefs that are impossible to prove. From that vantage point, life and civilization look very fragile indeed.

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186