Nothing Lasts Forever

1hr 27mins (12)

Fascinating documentary about diamonds ★★★★★

Now and again there comes a documentary that turns your view of a subject upside down, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. Jason Kohn’s “witty, highly entertaining” film is one of them. Its focus is on the diamond industry (and De Beers in particular); the way the gems have been marketed to the world (they are not “the precious rarity” of popular imagination); and the “seismic” impact of the lab-grown stones now infiltrating the market. Along the way, it asks us to consider what gives a diamond value: is it its size, its beauty – or “the fact that it was pulled out of a mine in Africa”?

“Thumping thriller music, boldly shot globe-spanning locations and a precise and unrelenting polemic” are just some of the hallmarks of this “propulsive” takedown, said Kevin Maher in The Times. Kohn convincingly argues that the diamond industry is built on shaky intellectual foundations and the manipulation of supply. His star witness is the designer and author Aja Raden (left), who delivers the zinger: “The truth about diamonds is that they’re all exactly the same and none of them are worth anything.” It is Kohn’s impeccably chosen interviewees who drive the story, said Daniel Fienberg in The Hollywood Reporter. Others include Dusan Simic, a “gemologist” dedicated to exposing fakes; and an executive who trumpets De Beers’s role in enriching and civilising Africa, in a scene straight out of Joseph Conrad. Yet it is the philosophical and economic issues raised by the film that most intrigued me, said Peter Debruge in Variety. Why do we associate diamonds with romance? And how does our desire for sparklers affect the price of vital medical tech? This is a film that forces us to question some of our core beliefs – including “the very notion of what is ‘real’”.