Title:
Lost Book Of Nostradamus
Running
Time: 94 minutes without commercials
Media:
The History Channel Original Presentation (NTSC DVD Screener)
Premiere
Sunday, October 28, 2007 at 9pm (ET)/ 8pm (CT)
Network:
The History Channel (Check your local cable/satellite listings for channel)
TV
Rating: Not Available At The Time Of Review
Reviewer:
Mark A. Rivera
When I
was a boy I saw a documentary narrated by Orson Wells called The Man Who Saw
Tomorrow. The World War III predictions scared me especially because the
dramatized what they thought the quatrains could mean, like a nuclear bomb
leveling New York City, etc. In the early 1990s, there was a TV special made
around the time of the first Gulf War where they tried to equate Saddam
Hussein with the Anti-Christ. Now of course things in the world seem worse than
ever and the safest thing anyone can say is we live in Extraordinary Times. I
don’t doubt the validity that could be inherent within the quatrains of
Nostradamus, but I do have doubts about the people who decipher them and how the
media interprets their meaning. I don’t believe Saddam Hussein was the
Anti-Christ anymore than I believe Ronald Reagan was the Anti-Christ and there
were people in the 1980s that actually believed that too. This documentary shows
images of Osama bin Laden and without outright saying it, gives the impression
that he is the Anti-Christ. I doubt that is true anymore than George W. Bush
being the Anti-Christ.
The
biggest problem with our world is people get too hung up on metaphor and begin
to take things literally. To me there is nothing scarier or more disturbing than
what people do to each other and themselves. Nine times out of ten, real atrocities
committed by ordinary humans throughout history have been more
frightening than anything I’ve seen in a horror movie. Lost Book Of
Nostradamus is engaging in it’s attempts to persuade the viewer the
“What ifs?” and create undo anxiety over whether or not the world will come
to an end in 2012, but just because someone says, the world will come to an end
on this or that date does not mean the planet explodes. You could say the world
came to an end on September 11, 2001 and that would be correct because the
consciousness changed as a result of the horror, but the planet is still here. I
found this documentary to be mostly a lot of hot air teases about possible
things based on evidence that is still being studied, pictures that were painted
at a different time from when the text was written, and quite honestly much of
the teases never lead anywhere. I don’t feel I learned much of anything from
this History Channel special that I did not already know and there are too many
unanswered questions too. In short, Lost Book Of Nostradamus might as
well be a a story you tell kids in a dark room lit by a flashlight. It may scare
you, but odds are in a few days you’ll forget all about it.
©
Copyright 2007 By Mark Rivera
All Rights Reserved.