Nada es eterno

I had wanted to see this movie for years, but until just recently it was next to impossible to see, never getting an official release. But it finally popped on TV, and I made sure to record and watch it. After seeing it, I can only say, "Strange... very strange..." Note that I didn't say it's an *awful* movie. The production design is very good, managing to capture the look and feel of movies made forty or so years earlier. And it's so offbeat that you can't help but be curious enough to stick with it in order to see how things will work out. But the problem is that the movie concentrates more on being strange than working to have strong characters and a solid story. Eventually I got somewhat tired of the movie. But if you are a fan of strange major Hollywood studio movies, it is definitely a must see. And it's unlikely a movie like this would get made today by a major Hollywood studio, so you might want to grab the chance to see this rarity.

A wide-eyed young man (Zach Galligan) arrives in New York with aspirations of becoming an artist. Once inside the confines of the city (which is VERY confined in this totalitarian society) he's prepped to become a working stiff, but an eccentric homeless person whom he has been overly generous to eventually guides the boy to his true fate.

The only thing stranger than the fact that this picture has barely been seen anywhere (officially, anyway) is that it was financed by a major studio. "Nothing Last Forever" is not a movie that mainstream '80s moviegoers would have flocked to see. Quite the contrary, if it had been widely released there's absolutely no question that it would have been an epic bomb... which is exactly the appeal.

Filmed mostly in black and white (with a few color sequences), it's simultaneously an homage and a parody of classic films. There are many breathtaking visuals and wonderful performances (from an amazing cast) and the film manages to get stranger as it rolls along, blending shadowy noir with kitschy sci-fi and light drama with heavy farce. As another reviewer pointed out, it's difficult NOT to draw comparisons to Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," which was made on a grander scale but is equally as offbeat, surreal and impossible to accurately describe. In other words, like that film, "Nothing Lasts Forever" is truly a work of art.

Here's hoping MGM will one day give the movie the lavish release that it deserves. While it'll never be a multi-billion-dollar draw, there's definitely a huge cult audience waiting to discover this lost gem.

This movie shares some similarities with Terry Gilliam's "Brazil". The mixing of 1930's and 1980's, the totalitarian state that pretends to be caring, a mix of freaky supporting characters and subtext behind every shot and concept. But Nothing Lasts Forever is lighter and more optimistic in tone and a modern (ish) fairy tale of searching for one's talent and purpose. The concepts of the Manhattan Port Authority taking control of New York, underground Angels, going shopping on the Moon in a bus and Bauhaus German techno artists in a mock 30's setting all show great creativity and originality; often missing in a lot of American comedies. And it also works the soundtrack (a mix of original and classical music) into the story extremely well.

Since a version of this film was "leaked" - if that's the right term -- to YouTube a few days ago, it's had a second life worthy of the film's own protagonist, liberated from a job yelling at bad drivers in the Holland Tunnel to a bravura performance at Carnegie Hall. There have been many evocative or pastiche films of the classic era -- Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo, Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, or Gary Ross's Pleasantville -- but none has more vividly, sweetly, and yet ironically invoked the magic of the movies as has this film. Don't be distracted by the Dan Ackroyd or Bill Murray cameos (fun as they are): keep your eye on the veterans, who've been in more films than you can count, and who bring their considerable powers to bear here: Sam Jaffe (The Day the Earth Stood Still, Bedknobs and Broomsticks); Paul Rogers (Billy Budd, The Homecoming) and the incomparable Imogene Coca, all part of a secret underground league of New York artists who seek to aid any who will give their all, unreservedly, to the cause of art. This film deserves an immediate DVD/BluRay release -- one can only imagine how richly it will shine -- and shame on MGM, Turner, Warner, and all who have kept this gem in their dark, dim, Gollum-like cavern of oblivion.

Never officially released, neither theatrically nor on home media, Tom Schiller's surreal science fiction fantasy Nothing Lasts Forever stars Zach Galligan as an eager young artist struggling to find his creative outlet in a New York City under the tyrannical rule of the Port Authority. Shot in black and white (for the most part) and with the sound recorded in mono, the film replicates the Classical Hollywood style of the late '30s and early '40s to create a dreamlike work that, had it been made during the indie boom of the '90s, would have easily found a cult following. Featuring strong supporting work from the likes of Dan Aykroyd, Lauren Tom, Apollonia van Ravenstein and Bill Murray – not to mention a midpoint shift in narrative that will leave an unsuspecting viewer reeling – Nothing Last Forever is an oddity of a film, perhaps too unusual for its time, that deserves, at the very least, a proper worldwide release.

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