Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on Jan 21, 2022 15:16:13 GMT -5
Farewell to Nostradamus
Despite not having a regular series there was a lot of Lupin output in the nineties, mainly through the fondly remembered feature-length television (and subsequently home video) specials. The pattern in the late seventies and eighties was one of series with semi-companion films, and the TV specials covered the best of both—regularly scheduled but infrequent enough to (theoretically) stay off creative exhaustion and able to command a high enough budget to serve as an event (an issue with the attempt at a Lupin direct-to-video series) but without taking the financial risk of a big theatrical release. A theatrical Lupin film, then, would seem redundant, but the specials were TV specials were successful enough to spark independent theatrical releases, twice. Neither of those nineties films have stuck as hard in memory as positively Mamo or Cagliostro or as infamously as Legend of the Gold of Babylon. Let’s give them a look, starting with the first of those two nineties films, 1995’s Farewell to Nostradamus (or To Hell with Nostradumus! or Die! Nostradamus or any of the alternate translations).
Just by look it’s not too much of a surprise this has fallen under the radar. The quality of animation is probably better in some technical respects than the contemporary TV specials of the early 90s, but it doesn’t look as sophisticated as the specials that would follow. A lot of that has to do with palette and lighting—Farewell to Nostradamus is quite bright and cheery, whereas those later specials would embrace darker tones and lankier figures. It gives Farewell a bit more of a direct-to-video family film look, even when, on closer examination, there’s much more going on than in the contemporary television specials. Still, one might think it was released to theaters because it’s better suited to a matinée than an evening time slot. The story—with a heavy emphasis on parents who don’t have time for their daughter—contributes to this feeling as well (I don’t know how much of the crap I saw as a kid on VHS—We’re Back, The Tom & Jerry Moviep, etc.—had that as a hook—Farewell, Nostradamus doesn’t really resemble those at all but it’s still a connection I can’t help but make), as do the big-eyed, somewhat rounded designs of the mains and the exagerrated features of the mooks.
The big aesthetic argument for a theatrical release involves the Earth Building, an enormous tower in Atlanta built and owned by mega-rich presidential aspirant named Douglas. Douglas’s vault—the key objective of the gang and their antagonists—is at the top of the tower. A failed attempt to access the vault leaves you sliding through the tower’s environmental systems and off the tower’s angled glass curtain walls. It’s not difficult animation, necessarily, but the effect of the sliding grid, falling body and moving camera really lends itself to a nice sense of disorientation even on a small-ish TV. There’s a lot of good suspense in seeing how Lupin will survive such slippery setbacks and fun in going through the tower’s ionnards. The paramilitary operation on the tower near the end utilizes the same sense of dizziness to a smaller effect. The tower’s inevitable collapse was also clearly made with a big screen in mind as well, a multi-layered bumpy ride to the bottom.
The Earth Tower is pretty compelling just for what it is. I remember, as a kid in the nineties and aughts, being interested in the various privately sponsored (but never really funded) proposals for megastructures that filtered into childrens’ books and games, SimCity arcologies and the Obayashi-Foster Millennium Tower and the like, expressions of late-to-post-Cold War neoliberal exuberance. We don’t get dates very often in Lupin installments, but this is one of the few that’s definitely placed in the near future, 1999. The Douglas Tower is in Atlanta, of all places as well—the 1996 Olympics was coming up and Douglas is kind of a Ted Turner stand-in (though he looks like Nixon, which makes it doubly odd that Douglas isn’t an antagonistic character). The big Maguffin is a book by Nostradamus in Douglas’s possession and an apocalyptic cult is on Lupin’s tail—all big nineties, especially nineties Japan, elements. Apart from some suspenseful moments the attraction of Farewell to Nostradamus is less sitting back and watching and more putting elements in the film in the context of its time.
That’s especially true because the story itself is overstuffed. We get multiple diversions, retreads, reemergences, side-trips, a lost (or imprisoned) relative, and even a serious bout of amnesia. Each step brings the feeling of being shunted onto a new track while needing to keep one wheel on the mainline. It’s not hard to follow, but taking so many little turns is just disengaging after a point. It’s not terribly sophisticated, as so much that’s thrown at you ultimately doesn’t end up mattering at all. It also lends to the bits of tonal disjoint—while tonal disjoint can work in Lupin it’s typically when things are put in immediate proximity rather than semi-contained in adjacent cells. Thus we have the Douglas family drama—
Douglas père needs to spend time with his daughter Julia, because family’s the greatest treasure of them all—
being unlocked by the Lupin family drama—
after Uncle Phil was tortured to death with a mind-reading machine, Arsène III kept his glass eye in his pocket as a memento.
Despite the well-being of child Julia being a main concern of the film, it was not overly cutesy, which is a plus. The film’s big recurring joke—that Julia thinks Lupin’s a pedophile—is not funny and gets old very fast. The humor in this doesn’t connect with me in general. Zenigata’s also relegated to pure comic relief with his porcine Lupin detector (which I did find amusing); I’d say he’s poorly integrated into the story but it’s not a very well-integrated story in the first place.
The fact that there’s just more of everything in Farewell to Nostradamus. We get a big, distinctive setting in the tower but the film seems to have been written with putting as much in—locations, plotlines, even personalities when we take amnesia into account—as possible, to justify a leap back to the big screen. It’s one of those cases where everything is equivalent to nothing, though. Like the man’s prophecies, Nostradamus is interesting in places but really more a meaningless jumble.
Not Recommended
Next time we finish up the Lupin film series with the fifth and final theatrical full-length release, Lupin III: Dead or alive.
Despite not having a regular series there was a lot of Lupin output in the nineties, mainly through the fondly remembered feature-length television (and subsequently home video) specials. The pattern in the late seventies and eighties was one of series with semi-companion films, and the TV specials covered the best of both—regularly scheduled but infrequent enough to (theoretically) stay off creative exhaustion and able to command a high enough budget to serve as an event (an issue with the attempt at a Lupin direct-to-video series) but without taking the financial risk of a big theatrical release. A theatrical Lupin film, then, would seem redundant, but the specials were TV specials were successful enough to spark independent theatrical releases, twice. Neither of those nineties films have stuck as hard in memory as positively Mamo or Cagliostro or as infamously as Legend of the Gold of Babylon. Let’s give them a look, starting with the first of those two nineties films, 1995’s Farewell to Nostradamus (or To Hell with Nostradumus! or Die! Nostradamus or any of the alternate translations).
Just by look it’s not too much of a surprise this has fallen under the radar. The quality of animation is probably better in some technical respects than the contemporary TV specials of the early 90s, but it doesn’t look as sophisticated as the specials that would follow. A lot of that has to do with palette and lighting—Farewell to Nostradamus is quite bright and cheery, whereas those later specials would embrace darker tones and lankier figures. It gives Farewell a bit more of a direct-to-video family film look, even when, on closer examination, there’s much more going on than in the contemporary television specials. Still, one might think it was released to theaters because it’s better suited to a matinée than an evening time slot. The story—with a heavy emphasis on parents who don’t have time for their daughter—contributes to this feeling as well (I don’t know how much of the crap I saw as a kid on VHS—We’re Back, The Tom & Jerry Moviep, etc.—had that as a hook—Farewell, Nostradamus doesn’t really resemble those at all but it’s still a connection I can’t help but make), as do the big-eyed, somewhat rounded designs of the mains and the exagerrated features of the mooks.
The big aesthetic argument for a theatrical release involves the Earth Building, an enormous tower in Atlanta built and owned by mega-rich presidential aspirant named Douglas. Douglas’s vault—the key objective of the gang and their antagonists—is at the top of the tower. A failed attempt to access the vault leaves you sliding through the tower’s environmental systems and off the tower’s angled glass curtain walls. It’s not difficult animation, necessarily, but the effect of the sliding grid, falling body and moving camera really lends itself to a nice sense of disorientation even on a small-ish TV. There’s a lot of good suspense in seeing how Lupin will survive such slippery setbacks and fun in going through the tower’s ionnards. The paramilitary operation on the tower near the end utilizes the same sense of dizziness to a smaller effect. The tower’s inevitable collapse was also clearly made with a big screen in mind as well, a multi-layered bumpy ride to the bottom.
The Earth Tower is pretty compelling just for what it is. I remember, as a kid in the nineties and aughts, being interested in the various privately sponsored (but never really funded) proposals for megastructures that filtered into childrens’ books and games, SimCity arcologies and the Obayashi-Foster Millennium Tower and the like, expressions of late-to-post-Cold War neoliberal exuberance. We don’t get dates very often in Lupin installments, but this is one of the few that’s definitely placed in the near future, 1999. The Douglas Tower is in Atlanta, of all places as well—the 1996 Olympics was coming up and Douglas is kind of a Ted Turner stand-in (though he looks like Nixon, which makes it doubly odd that Douglas isn’t an antagonistic character). The big Maguffin is a book by Nostradamus in Douglas’s possession and an apocalyptic cult is on Lupin’s tail—all big nineties, especially nineties Japan, elements. Apart from some suspenseful moments the attraction of Farewell to Nostradamus is less sitting back and watching and more putting elements in the film in the context of its time.
That’s especially true because the story itself is overstuffed. We get multiple diversions, retreads, reemergences, side-trips, a lost (or imprisoned) relative, and even a serious bout of amnesia. Each step brings the feeling of being shunted onto a new track while needing to keep one wheel on the mainline. It’s not hard to follow, but taking so many little turns is just disengaging after a point. It’s not terribly sophisticated, as so much that’s thrown at you ultimately doesn’t end up mattering at all. It also lends to the bits of tonal disjoint—while tonal disjoint can work in Lupin it’s typically when things are put in immediate proximity rather than semi-contained in adjacent cells. Thus we have the Douglas family drama—
Douglas père needs to spend time with his daughter Julia, because family’s the greatest treasure of them all—
being unlocked by the Lupin family drama—
after Uncle Phil was tortured to death with a mind-reading machine, Arsène III kept his glass eye in his pocket as a memento.
Despite the well-being of child Julia being a main concern of the film, it was not overly cutesy, which is a plus. The film’s big recurring joke—that Julia thinks Lupin’s a pedophile—is not funny and gets old very fast. The humor in this doesn’t connect with me in general. Zenigata’s also relegated to pure comic relief with his porcine Lupin detector (which I did find amusing); I’d say he’s poorly integrated into the story but it’s not a very well-integrated story in the first place.
The fact that there’s just more of everything in Farewell to Nostradamus. We get a big, distinctive setting in the tower but the film seems to have been written with putting as much in—locations, plotlines, even personalities when we take amnesia into account—as possible, to justify a leap back to the big screen. It’s one of those cases where everything is equivalent to nothing, though. Like the man’s prophecies, Nostradamus is interesting in places but really more a meaningless jumble.
Not Recommended
Next time we finish up the Lupin film series with the fifth and final theatrical full-length release, Lupin III: Dead or alive.