Nothing Lasts ForeverIn life, we have our roles to play. We make our treks abroad, in search of something--in search of ourselves. But we are on a tether--a tether of destiny; we are blessed if that tether pulls us toward a destination we desire, expressed or not. Adam Beckett (Zach Galligan) has been abroad in Europe, struggling to "discover himself", that loaded phrase, only to receive the first of many bizarre instructions to return home, a sideways navigation toward his ultimate purpose, back to Manhattan. But the city Adam left has changed, and he must find a way to achieve his ambition without losing himself in the process.
|
|
Nothing Lasts Forever is a unique movie, a kind of surreal comedy drenched in the glaze of nostalgia; if Frank Capra and David Lynch made a movie together, you'd end up with this film. The movie is shot and framed like a vintage find from the 1940s, complete with stock footage of airplanes, traffic, and crowds. Nothing Lasts Forever even includes a periodic musical number, sung by a couple of different female characters, interjected as if they were as natural as dialogue. What makes these interludes oddly humorous is due in part to our own expectations; the classic films which Nothing Lasts Forever emulates would not cause us to bat an eye at this...here, we recognize the abnormal behavior, which contributes to the comedy. Unlike the works of Frank Capra by and large, Nothing Lasts Forever feels subtly cynical to me. Consider the New York City Adam returns to: the city is under the tyrannical grip of the bureaucratic Port Authority, managing all aspects of life from admission to employment. The Kafka-esque nature of a world submerged in neurotic madness mirrors the ever-encroaching restrictions and statutes imposed by NYC municipal law and policy, with "artistic aptitude exams" being administered--like drawing a nude woman in three minutes--handled with all the sterility and sanitized neutrality of a driver's license exam. After Adam's accidental boarding of a bus to the moon--you heard that right--he discovers that the moon is actually a shopper's Mecca...or, more accurately, a kind of outer space "Dubai", a place where rich old people can go to shop. It is a consumerist colony in the Sea of Tranquility, a service attraction like Disney World or Universal Studios; even the elderly attendees have microchips implanted in their brains so that they keep the secret, consistently referring to their shopping excursions as trips to "Miami". What Adam discovers in his return to America is that the world he has come back to has turned into an authoritative, manipulative sham, a world which is more content to control its populous through bureaucracy or consumerism, take your pick. But like a modern day Candide, Adam is set upon becoming an artist, regardless of the twisted state of the world around him.
Adam's dreams of being an artist are primarily motivated by his initial dream which opens the film...a kind of familiar dream for anyone who's ever had stage fright. He is set to play Carnegie Hall--touted as a talented pianist--but his confidence flails and he is embarrassed on stage. After being roused from his slumber--aboard a train in some Scandinavian country, he is encouraged by a fellow passenger to return home, to become an "artist". Adam makes a solemn vow into the downpour of rain in an open window of the train to become an artist, and returns to his aunt and uncle in the United States. But truthfully, it sounds as flighty as if your own nephew had went away to study abroad only to return with the same proclamation. His aunt and uncle are genial about his decision, but you sense they don't believe he will achieve his goals; and why should they? The truth is that I wasn't convinced that Adam had any real passion to become an artist, other than it was simply something to do. He certainly goes through the motions of trying to become a bohemian artist in SoHo, getting a loft apartment, hanging out with a beautiful German expat, who takes him to performance art shows and experimental concerts a la Warhol's Factory, raving about the Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin viewed on the smallest television in the world, reading "Understanding Dada" while working as a traffic controller day job in the Holland Tunnel. Adam seems doomed, until he experiences a transcendent moment of purity, a vision where an elderly gentleman brings him into the fold of a secret society of movers and shakers under New York City; their goal is to make him their artistic scion, for him to spread culture and depth across the moon. (The film dips into color in these heightened moments of clarity, a jarring and thrilling experience for the otherwise black-and-white film.) But just as Adam is confused by these radical turn of events, so too must we be at them; can this all really be happening to Adam? Maybe, just maybe, he is dreaming these visions. Maybe he is trying so desperately to be an artist, working himself to exhaustion in his efforts and his occupation that he has fantasized his induction into this secret order lead by "Father Knickerbocker" (Sam Jaffe), because he is stuck in a rut, trying to figure out what to do after his attempts to find himself; it's like a weird cross between The Graduate, The Wizard of Oz, and Eraserhead. In some ways, Adam is living a life on rails, living the prescribed dreams others have set down for him, making his achievements less a matter of individual chain-breaking of the soul than finding his place in the world's machine. There's a lot one can read into beneath the surface of the plot, beneath his inevitable meeting with his "soulmate", the lovely, lunar hula girl, Eloy (Lauren Tom), beneath the "lunar-tinis" and the secret societies...or maybe, it is just a sweet, weird dream, something which feels like a waking vision, an oddity from a rare moment in time, a delightful hiccup caught in that realm of fantasy and dream. Dream on, Adam Beckett, and your dream will come true.
Recommended for: Fans of a delightfully strange comedy, with throwbacks to the classics of the Forties, and a surprising pedigree from--of all places--Saturday Night Live, including cameos by Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, even produced by Lorne Michaels. Plus, for fans of Gremlins, it's fun to see Zach Galligan in something else.
Adam's dreams of being an artist are primarily motivated by his initial dream which opens the film...a kind of familiar dream for anyone who's ever had stage fright. He is set to play Carnegie Hall--touted as a talented pianist--but his confidence flails and he is embarrassed on stage. After being roused from his slumber--aboard a train in some Scandinavian country, he is encouraged by a fellow passenger to return home, to become an "artist". Adam makes a solemn vow into the downpour of rain in an open window of the train to become an artist, and returns to his aunt and uncle in the United States. But truthfully, it sounds as flighty as if your own nephew had went away to study abroad only to return with the same proclamation. His aunt and uncle are genial about his decision, but you sense they don't believe he will achieve his goals; and why should they? The truth is that I wasn't convinced that Adam had any real passion to become an artist, other than it was simply something to do. He certainly goes through the motions of trying to become a bohemian artist in SoHo, getting a loft apartment, hanging out with a beautiful German expat, who takes him to performance art shows and experimental concerts a la Warhol's Factory, raving about the Odessa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin viewed on the smallest television in the world, reading "Understanding Dada" while working as a traffic controller day job in the Holland Tunnel. Adam seems doomed, until he experiences a transcendent moment of purity, a vision where an elderly gentleman brings him into the fold of a secret society of movers and shakers under New York City; their goal is to make him their artistic scion, for him to spread culture and depth across the moon. (The film dips into color in these heightened moments of clarity, a jarring and thrilling experience for the otherwise black-and-white film.) But just as Adam is confused by these radical turn of events, so too must we be at them; can this all really be happening to Adam? Maybe, just maybe, he is dreaming these visions. Maybe he is trying so desperately to be an artist, working himself to exhaustion in his efforts and his occupation that he has fantasized his induction into this secret order lead by "Father Knickerbocker" (Sam Jaffe), because he is stuck in a rut, trying to figure out what to do after his attempts to find himself; it's like a weird cross between The Graduate, The Wizard of Oz, and Eraserhead. In some ways, Adam is living a life on rails, living the prescribed dreams others have set down for him, making his achievements less a matter of individual chain-breaking of the soul than finding his place in the world's machine. There's a lot one can read into beneath the surface of the plot, beneath his inevitable meeting with his "soulmate", the lovely, lunar hula girl, Eloy (Lauren Tom), beneath the "lunar-tinis" and the secret societies...or maybe, it is just a sweet, weird dream, something which feels like a waking vision, an oddity from a rare moment in time, a delightful hiccup caught in that realm of fantasy and dream. Dream on, Adam Beckett, and your dream will come true.
Recommended for: Fans of a delightfully strange comedy, with throwbacks to the classics of the Forties, and a surprising pedigree from--of all places--Saturday Night Live, including cameos by Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, even produced by Lorne Michaels. Plus, for fans of Gremlins, it's fun to see Zach Galligan in something else.