Diamonds are eternal, says the well-known marketing slogan of the De Beers company, the world’s largest producer and trader of diamonds, and Jason Kohn’s interesting documentary tries to find an answer to the question of whether this is so. And why and why diamonds are so valuable and expensive, why people, at least those who have money and can afford these precious stones, throw tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that is actually a piece of carbon. Just as Kohn obviously thinks that the whole diamond industry is one big sale of fog and illusion, such is the tone and spirit of this documentary, which is technically an investigative documentary, but with obvious irony and sarcasm that seems to emphasize the banality of the whole story.
Especially when you consider that the focus of “Nothing Lasts Forever” is an investigation into the difference between real, natural diamonds and synthetic, man-made diamonds. And how to recognize them since they have already mixed with each other that it has become almost impossible to distinguish which stone is worth hundreds of thousands and which is worth hundreds of dollars. From the very beginning, the diamond trade was actually the sale of an illusion, and that “Diamond Dream” created in the marketing departments of De Beers and similar companies that have mining concessions in Africa, has been successfully sold for decades.
People have been buying expensive jewelry for a whole century, believing that it is really something valuable, something that they will leave as a legacy to the next generations, but what if we don’t actually know that we have a counterfeit, something that is worth almost nothing. Kohn gathered a real gallery of interesting interlocutors who talk about this rather unknown, but very interesting topic from all angles. Aja Raden is a jewelry designer who claims that the whole industry is pure illusion, while the owner of America’s largest diamond store, an old New York Jew, claims that the value of a real diamond cannot be compared to anything. There is also the funniest and most interesting character in the entire film, Serbian jeweler Dušan Simić, who has been living in New York for thirty years and whose main job is to determine the difference between real and synthetic diamonds. But his existence is now threatened because cheap technology has appeared that anyone can find out what it is about, so his job has become unnecessary and he is looking for a way to survive in the jewelry business.
This entertaining and unpretentious documentary takes us through Africa, China and India to New York’s diamond quarter, which we were able to meet in the excellent feature film “Uncut Gems” by the Safdie brothers with Adam Sandler. And just as, from my perspective, throwing away riches on a piece of crystallized carbon is complete madness and another in a series of hobbies for idle snobs who don’t know what to do with money, it seems to me that the message of this documentary goes in that direction. We can see all the cynicism, hypocrisy and fairy tales surrounding this industry, and as if in a mocking way, “Nothing lasts forever” he wants to say, only you throw your money on these trinkets, fill the pockets of already too rich sellers of illusions who know very well that they are fooling you something completely worthless. Although none of them will admit it out loud.