clanciai Review of Nostradamus

Nostradamus (1994)

The adventures of Nostradamus with drugs and hallucinations and hysterical women

[8/10 · 26 September 2023]

This is the "real" Nostradamus film based on facts on his life and his adventures with the inquisition and the court, from his childhood unto his final understanding with Queen Catherine de'Medici. It is not strictly realistic though, and there is much experimental speculation in his visions and so called prophecies, which the film takes seriously while no one ever has understood them, and the speculations about them always have been running wild. The best character of the film is F. Murray Abraham as his tutor Scalinger, who knows something about the seriousness of real sacred books and secret knowledge, and his scenes are the best in the film. The weirdness of the inquisition is much exaggerated and dramatised, making them all appear as one-sidedly evil, while all the ladies are played well enough although their sexual frustrations are somewhat unnecessarily exaggerated. Comparing this film, shot in Romania (the Nosferatu country) with the other Nostradamus film of 2000 shot entirely in Winnipeg, the later one is actually better, although all science fiction. It is better scripted, it is ingenious and more dramatic, and although all out of this world there is no mumbo-jumbo in it, while here the inquisition scenes and monks appear rather preposterously exaggerated. It is interesting as an illustration of Nostradamus' life, consisting mainly of conjecture, but it is far from a good or great film.