NOSTRADAMUS
A film review by Raymond Johnston
Copyright 1994 Raymond Johnston
Starring- Tcheky Kayro, F. Murray Abraham, Amanda Plummer, Rutger Hauer. Directed by- Roger Christian Distributed by Orion Classics
Sometime during the plague of the mid 1500s a doctor named Michel de Nostradame wrote a few volumes of strange prophetic poems. Whether one considers him a gifted seer or a charlatan, he is a character whose life is brimming with cinematic and narrative possibilities.
None of those possibilities are realized in the current film bearing his name.
The filmmakers wholeheartedly embrace the gifted seer theory of his life. They create a laughably inept story out of the few known facts of his life. If it wasn't for world-class bad RAPA NUI, this would be the worst film of the year.
Almost all the actors somnambulate through their scenes, seemingly ashamed that somebody in the audience will recognize them. Tcheky Kayro, who bears some resemblance to sketches of Nostradamus, gives the tired cliches of his awkward and unnatural dialogue a shot, but there is no way to make his lines credible. His first scene is the dreadful medical student who knows more than his teacher scene, complete with dissected cadaver. Nostradamus contradicts his teacher and recites near-modern medical theories. The teacher promptly dies of the plague, right in the middle of class. Luckily Nostradamus, the new medical student, has a theory on curing the plague as well. Luckily everything he needs is right at hand.
The rest of the story continues with the usual mish-mash of narrow minded witch hunters, dark torture chambers, oppressed would be scholars, forbidden manuscripts, oppressed modern feminist women, inept dandy monarchs and a little coveting thy neighbor's wife; all this plus stock footage of the Second World War.
The filmmakers take a grave sense of doom to the project. They pretend that there is an urgent need for the audience to embrace these predictions. They greatly inflate the clarity of Nostradamus's almost unreadable allegorical poems. The result is something resembling Sunn Classics films like IN SEARCH OF HISTORIC JESUS or IN SEARCH OF NOAH'S ARK. They credit Nostradamus with everything from predicting the Kennedy assassination to inventing musk oil perfume and aroma therapy.
While the cast includes an Oscar winner, the whole production is amateurish. The film is exceedingly washed out and grainy, with even more grainy special effects. All the sound is noticeably post synched. The lighting scheme is dark and muddy. Romanian landmarks are palmed off as Renaissance France.
Continuing his near-suicidal career choices since his triumph in AMADEUS is F. Murray Abraham. He plays a the leader of some ill-defined esoteric cult that possesses a hallucinogenic drug resembling LSD. Nostradamus takes lots of this, and has nightmarish visions. Later, having a flashback no doubt, he imagines himself surrounded by Nazi soldiers and Panzer tanks. The soldiers run around him, but don't seem to see him.
The manner of his visions is not consistent. At other times he just looks in a bowl of water to see stock footage of Hitler, Kennedy, and others. To make his prediction of three global wars seem true, the filmmakers elevate the Gulf War to the standing of World Wars I and II. This stock footage technique might be amusing on an I Dream of Jeannie episode but can hardly pass for special effects in the wake of JURASSIC PARK.
Then the filmmakers show that none of them can even count. They have character say repeatedly that his visions are for five hundred years in the future, the end of the twentieth century. From the mid 16th Century when the film takes place, it is only four hundred years.
What Rutger Hauer is doing in this mess is anybody's guess. His bizarre role is so small that he at least spares himself from complete embarrassment. The only actor to be able to count this as a career plus is Amanda Plummer. She manages to squeeze a semblance of character out of Catherine de Medici. Her few scenes are a stray reminder that this could have been a decent historical drama. One of Amanda Plummer's scenes is the horror highlight of the film, such as it is. It rips off both CARRIE and THE SHINING. The few horror scenes in the film are the ones that are most effective.
If Nostradamus could have looked into the future and seen this film, he would have burned his books to spare himself this future indignity.
For no real reason I saw NOSTRADAMUS and MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN on the same day. There are a few similarities between the two films. Both are costume dramas concerning medical students and their unscientific experiments. Both films had their heroes neglect their families. Both had their heroes doggedly pursued across Europe. Both had a star from AMADEUS. The complete cinematic poverty of NOSTRADAMUS made me appreciate the lush gothic excess and outlandish visual style of the underrated FRANKENSTEIN.
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