One is a character from Uncut Gems, the other straight out of a Joseph Conrad novel. With Kohn as a curious and cautious interrogator, these figures slide quickly into their respective forms of self-defense, whether it’s Rapaport being offended by synthetic diamonds on behalf of generations of girls who, he argues, deserve the love embodied by a real diamond or Lussier trumpeting the importance of companies like De Beers in civilizing and enriching Africa. People like Rapaport and Lussier are on the defensive. Synthetic diamonds, however, assail everything we’ve accepted about diamonds, from their scarcity to their necessity as a central cog in a manufactured notion of love. The industry helped construct an artificial version of romantic love in which diamonds were somehow an integral piece, and that perception was cemented across movies and television and literature as something unassailable. Five or 10 years ago, Big Diamond was so comfortable in its insulated position that somebody like Martin Rapaport, head of the industry standardizing and pricing organ the Rapaport Group, or longtime De Beers executive Stephen Lussier wouldn’t have felt any need to sit down for an on-the-record chat. The documentary, premiering at the Berlin Film Festival and already earmarked for a Showtime launch, is a neat and efficient globe-trotting journey, full of insightful trivia and fun details, driven by impeccably selected main characters, who either go through interesting personal arcs in just 87 minutes or, like Raden, unleash a nonstop torrent of cleverness.Īs Raden observes, it’s immediately telling how many of the biggest representatives of the industry actually made themselves available to Kohn. Raden, who has possibly the highest gems-to-comments ratio I’ve ever seen from a documentary talking head, is one of the main reasons Nothing Lasts Forever is such a pleasure to watch. So the synthetic diamond is just a lie about a lie.” Or, as jewelry designer and author Aja Raden puts it, “The diamond was never real either. 'A Piece of Sky' ('Drii Winter'): Film Review | Berlin 2022
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