The Lost City of Z

Director: James Gray
Screenplay: James Gray (based on the book by David Grann)
Stars: Charlie Hunnam (Percy Fawcett),Robert Pattinson (Henry Costin), Sienna Miller (Nina Fawcett), Tom Holland (Jack Fawcett), Edward Ashley (Arthur Manley), Angus Macfadyen (James Murray), Ian McDiarmid (Sir George Goldie), Clive Francis (Sir John Scott Keltie), Pedro Coello (Tadjui), Matthew Sunderland (Dan), Johann Myers (Willis), Aleksandar Jovanovic (Urquhart), Elena Solovey (Madame Kumel)
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Year of Release: 2017
Country: U.S.
The Lost City of Z
The Lost City of Z

Based on the true story of early 20th-century British explorer Percy Fawcett, James Gray’s The Lost City of Z is a fascinating portrait of both the limits of human knowledge and the insatiable drive to discover more. Fawcett, played by Charlie Hunnam, is first drafted into service in 1906 as an Army officer by the Royal Geographic Society to help map an uncharted river near the borders of Bolivia and Brazil and discover its source—a mission that is, not incidentally, firmly rooted in British colonialism. This expedition is successful, and it leads to the incidental discovery of apparent evidence of what Fawcett comes to believe was a massive, ancient civilization that has since been consumed by the jungle. Dubbed “Z” (or “Zed”), this hidden city becomes Fawcett’s lifelong obsession, drawing him repeatedly back into the wilds of the Amazonian rainforest on multiple, years-long explorations to prove a theory that most scientists, archeologists, and explorers dismissed as the same misguided fantasies that led many a conquistador to his death hundreds of years earlier.

As played by Hunnam, Fawcett is an intriguing character who balances the dangerous pull to find the lost city with the desire to be with his wife Nina (Sienna Miller) and children, who he does not see for years at a time. His urge to find Z is not necessarily one of conquest, but rather quite the opposite; he wants to find it to prove the theory that there were advanced civilizations in South America that predated European accomplishments, which flies in the face of the empire-building that defined that period. One could imagine a different director—say, Werner Herzog in his ’70s heyday—making a very different kind of film, one that focuses intently on Fawcett’s seemingly suicidal drive to discover the jungle’s secrets as a metaphor for civilized man’s fundamentally deranged nature. But, The Lost City of Z paints Fawcett as a relatively well-rounded character, one who keeps his head while struggling with the different directions in which is desire is being pulled.

Fawcett’s partner, Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson), a more experienced explorer, is an intrepid and constant source of support, but Fawcett nevertheless runs into numerous obstacles, including his detractors back home, many of whom are fearful that the great British empire might be put to shame by an ancient civilization; the outbreak of World War I, which sends him into the trenches in France; and James Murray (Angus Macfadyen), a wealthy benefactor whose boasts about his Arctic explorations as a younger man do nothing to equip him to travel with Fawcett on one of his expeditions, where he becomes an undue burden.

All of writer/director James Gray’s previous films have had a stark, distinct New York setting (including his auspicious debut, 1994’s Little Odessa, and most recently 2013’s The Immigrant). Thus, he would seem to be operating in a completely different world here, as the film vacillates between Fawcett’s home-life in London and his slogging through the Amazonian jungles. Yet, virtually all of his previous films were about outsiders, usually immigrants, living in New York, especially Brooklyn, so he is well versed in stories about strangers in a strange land, which cuts both ways in Fawcett’s life: he is a stranger in the jungles, an imposing environment that leaves little or no room for error and is filled with all manner of lethal dangers, but he also becomes a kind of stranger at home, as his children barely know him and his mind is often back in those jungles. Fawcett is thus a man with feet in both worlds, and his tragedy lies is the struggle to reconcile that desire to know with all the myriad dangers such knowledge poses.

Copyright © 2017 James Kendrick

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Overall Rating: (3.5)




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