SYNOPSIS: This period drama explores the life and times of the 16th century doctor and scientist who some believed could see into the future. Michel de Nostradamus (Tcheky Karyo) was the son in a Jewish family who posed as Catholics to be spared the wrath of the Inquisition. As a student of the renowned physician Dr. Scalinger (F. Murray Abraham), Nostradamus created herbal cures and did pioneering research in the importance of proper nutrition and hygiene. However, he was unable to protect his wife Marie (Julia Ormand) from the Black Plague sweeping the country, and he lost both her and their two children. Nostradamus remarried, to widow Anne (Assumpta Sterna), but at the urging of Scalinger, he began to more carefully explore the strange trances that befell him, and Nostradamus began writing prophetic essays predicting any number of future catastrophes. Nostradamus also features Amanda Plummer as Queen Catherine de Medici and Anthony Higgins as the King.
Synopsis
The Black Plague threatened man´s existence. The inquisition of a tyrannical church terrorized the masses. But Nostradamus (Tcheky Karyo) stared through a window to the future. From his turbulant childhood forward, prophetic visinos haunted him. A brilliant iconoclast at odds with scholars, proests and rulers, he constantly struggled for credibility and his life. A parisian doctor, Sclinger (F. Murray Abraham) embraced him as s tudent and friend. Privy to the journals of great intellectuals stored in Scalingers´ secret study, Nostradamus strove to regard his frightening foresight, not as a curse, but as a gift that set him among the wise. Lust, passion and unbridled sex drove him to distraction. His first marriage to Scalinger´s assistant (Julia Ormond) ended in tragedy..
