L'uomo che vide il futuro

The next time you feel overwhelmed by apocalypse hysteria coming at you over the media, rent this film and sit back and have a good laugh--this film forcasts massive worldwide earthquakes in 1988, world war by 1994 (27 years of it!), apocalypse by 1999, blah, blah, blah....This is a magnificent illustration of how selling doom works as business, and having these predictions to watch from the comfort of the late '90s is a marvelous tonic against wild claims made by all manner of 'experts.' Have some high-cholesterol popcorn (with lots of salt), fire up the ozone-depleting air-conditioning, and let this film fill you in on how the world ended! Enjoy!

I guess my view of the prophecies of Michel de Nostradamus - the 16th century French prophet who is said to have written down accurate predictions of at least 2000 years of forthcoming human events – hold about as much weight as for me as something like The Da Vinci Code. There are a lot of holes in the Nostradamus' predictions so I tend to chalk it up as nothing more than an interesting curiosity.

The documentary The Man Who Saw Tomorrow doesn't see it that way. Here is a movie that offers a tiny bit of biography about the supposed prophet, and then cobbles together footage from every source under the sun in an effort to prove his accuracy. Did he have fore-knowledge of the future? Did he accurately predict The French Revolution? Napoleon? The American Revolution? The Civil War? The rise of Hitler? World War II? The Atomic Bomb? The Kennedy Assassination? The Moon Landing? Is he also right in his prediction about World War III and the end of the world? Well, I don't happen to think so, but I am confused about whether the movie does. It spends 90 minutes reiterating that Nostradamus wrote down 2000 years worth of prophecies that came true and then adds a tag at the end to tell us that the producers of this film are actually less convinced of his accuracy than I am.

Hosted by Orson Welles, who sits in his stuffy office behind a desk smoking a cigar, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow attempts to lay out all of the major turning points of history by way of Nostradamus' writing. Before diving head-long into his predictions, we learn that Nostradamus was a hard working student who had ambitions to be a doctor but after losing his family in the plague, turned his ambitions toward writing down his predictions in quatrains, hiding his verses in anagrams and secret code in an effort to avoid being prosecuted for witchcraft. Early on, we learn, he kissed the robes of a young Franciscan friar who would someday be Pope Sixtus V. Later he was invited to the home of a dignitary where he accurately predicted which pig they would be eating. Curiously, he forgot to jot those things down.

The historical predictions put forth by Nostradamus are interesting, but the methods in which the movie presents them are, in a word, baffling. Nothing is off limits here. There is footage of the Kennedy assassination, the holocaust, The Moon Landing, the revolution in Iran. Then, for events where there is no footage, sometimes actors are used in recreations and other times we get footage from old movies like War and Peace. Sprinkled into the mix also are old newsreels, short films, documentary footage, illustrations and cheap special effects shots from old science fiction movies.

The only center of logic in this chaotic jumble is a very brief interview with former astronaut Edgar Mitchell who argues that the future is nothing more than our summation of present events. I think I would have liked to have heard more from him and less from Jean Dixon, who appears absurdly satisfied that she predicted the deaths of both John and Bobby Kennedy. That's before Welles informs us that we can see Nostradamus' accuracy if we simply keep one eye on the quatrains and the other on our daily newspaper. For me, that's just too much work. I think I'll just let the future surprise me.

The movie keeps insisting over and over that Nostadamus laid out a historical time line the revealed three men who would try to take over the world – Anti-Christs he called them. The first was Napoleon, the second was Hitler and the third is said to be a future tyrant who will come from the Middle East. This man, it is said, will plunge the world into a catastrophic war that will last 4 and 20 years, whatever that means.

That prediction lays out the film's final act in which Nostradamus apparently predicted that a Middle Eastern Warrior in a blue turban would start World War III at or about May of 1988. That leads to an embarrassingly silly scene with cheap sets right out of "Battlestar Galactica", with the governments of both The Middle East and The United States firing nukes at each other until civilization is obliterated. After that, the movie helpfully reminds us that Nostradamus predicted a thousand years of peace before the world ends in 3797.

The Man Who Saw Tomorrow is nothing more than a curiosity. Any attempt to take it seriously the requires the kinds of fruitless insights than are often attached to things like The Da Vinci Code, Roswell or Bigfoot. I'm no skeptic but I had to smile at most of this. It is a professionally made film that probably takes its subject more seriously than it should. I find the predictions of Nostradamus to be a curious but not essential element to human history. He seemed to have a good track record even if he did predict that Ted Kennedy would become President of the United States in 1984. Hey, nobody's perfect.

Firstly, let's talk about the movie:

The movie worked professionally with the past historical facts and linked it with Nostradamus' quatrains, facts like The rise and fall of Napoleon, The rise and fall of Hitler, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, John and Robert Kennedy and the fall of Shah Ali Bahlawy of Iran (Persia as Nostradamus said) and the rise of AyatoAllah Al Khomini .. the interpretations are so good concerning the past and the historical events but the future events (keep in mind that the movie was released in 1981 which is more than a quarter of a century ago) like the destructive earthquakes that will destroy San Francesco, The famine after the coming of the great comet (The movie mentioned the Halley comet which passed near the earth on 1986), and the hilarious interpretation about the third king of terror (Anti-Christ as the movie said) which was shown as a no more than a clown wearing strange outfit which reminds us with the Prince of Persia (lol) as to convince us that the coming king of terror will come from the middle east and will be a Muslim and will start the WWIII between 1994 and 1999!! Hurraaaaay !! of course all these interpretations are fake and didn't happen at all !!

Now let's talk about Nostradamus .. the real one:

All the historical facts and scenes in the movie featuring Nostradamus' life and death are absolutely true and historically authenticated .. the quatrains mentioned in the movie are almost true (with some mistakes from the translation of the quatrains from French to English) What is not correct are the interpretations.. for example:

• Orson Wells said that Nostradamus mentioned Moselini (Brute, empty minded, ... etc) but there's no evidence that Moselini was mentioned in the prophecies of Nostradamus

• Nostradamus didn't mention the word Anti-Christ describing Napoleon or Hitler or even the 3rd yet unknown king of terror (By the way, Nostradamus said that his name will be MABUS, he'll ignite a massive destructive war (maybe the WWIII) which will last for 27.5 years) .. the word Anti-Christ is not valid here as they are all not anti-Christs, the Anti-Christ is only one in the world history who'll appear at the end of time .. He didn't come yet .. he has special figure and characteristics known by the Christians and Muslims .. Napoleon was described in his era and since then as an (The Enemy of the Christ) when he insulted the Pope and took the imperial crown from him to put it on his own head, Hitler was described as (The Enemy of the man kind) when he insulted the cross (A Christian holy symbol) and changed it's shape to satisfy the Nazi's propaganda, the 3rd king of terror didn't come yet so how we can describe him as an anti-Christ ?!

• Killing and torturing the Jews is a crime made by Hitler but that does make him Anti-Semitic and not an Anti-Christ

• The Quatrain talking about the 3rd king of terror is (Century X Q72):

The year 1999, seventh month, From the sky will come a great King of Terror: To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols, Before and after Mars to reign by good luck.

so The 3rd king of terror can't be Muslim nor Arabian at all .. as Nostradamus described him He's a king (Remember the American dynasty! Bush the Senior and Bush the Junior?!) and he'll come in the seventh month of 1999 (Remeber the American Presidancy elections: Exit William Clinton and Enter G. W. Bush ??!!), he'll return the legacy of Ghengis Khan the king of Mongols (Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, he's quite controlling Pakistan by controlling Musharaf, and is threatening Iran and wants to invade it and also he's tampering with China) ..don't all that remind us with the way of Ghengis Khan) .. The quatrain ends by(before and after war reigns with good luck): so imagine who's luckier than Bush to win all the wars and to destroy his county's resources and economy just to provide more and more money and funds to his infernal military war craft which reigns the world by now .. The King of terror's name as Nostradamus said is MABUS (if we reverse the letter M upside down to be W, transfer the A to be H (very similar 2 letters) and put it in the end of the word then like a magic MABUS will be W BUSH .. VOILA .. got him!!

• The Anti-Christ is not a Christian or a Muslim as they both believe in Jessus (Eissa in Islam) and can't be against him

• I agree on the concept that Nostradamus was a strange and unrepeatable phenomenon that he really could see the future and the evidence for that is his prophecies which that are coming true day after day and era after era .. what I don't agree on is the selection, changing and manipulating his prophecies to serve political or Zionist ideas or purposes .. that the 3rd King or terror is a Muslim and death will come from the countries of Islam .. and etc with all that unreal and illogic mambo gambo ... we should consider and make up our minds to know the real hidden truth ...

Sorry Ors *** Lo'ay

I think its important to note that when you make literally thousands of predictions, some of them will certainly occur. That said, every prediction Nostradamus made is open to numerous and varied interpretations. As we move toward whatever future may be for us, there will always be those who will see something in a quatrain that strikes them as similar enough to think, "AHA! He got it right!". When you watch this movie, keep in mind that several of the more popular quatrains have been applied to multiple events at various times through history, always with the "AHA!" moment in the minds of the interpreters. There have understandably been those people who, acting in their own devious interests, have manufactured events specifically to resemble predictions, knowing that men who believe events will unfold a certain way, will work to ensure they do, even to their own detriment. Keep in mind, Nostradamus' own disclaimer: "the One who is reasonable can learn from my prophecies how to find the right path to take as if he would have found footprints in the sand from someone who has gone before." The future IS ours to choose. Our future may be predetermined, but its predetermined by our choices each day.

I can't understand why people feel the need to have a controlling influence in their lives, be it God or any other channel. Why can't you take control and responsibility for your own actions and make the world a better place with a positive influence.

Bad things happen, they have always happened and they always will. Any event in our recent memory will be served as a spectacular event but looking at events in our time they are all insignificant compared to historical events.

Hitler is always vaunted as an anti-Christ when (obviously he was a despicable tyrant) Stalin was responsible for far more suffering.

Live your lives and take control of them or someone else will at your behest.