‘The Lost City Of Z’ Review: James Gray Journeys To The Jungle And Returns With A Great Film
By Josh Spiegel/April 17, 2017 8:00 am EST
The film spans two decades, starting in Ireland in 1905 as military officer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) struggles to make a name for himself in a world where ancestry is of vital importance, and his is shaky at best. Soon, Fawcett is approached by the Royal Geographical Society to survey and explore the far reaches of Bolivia with a small crew, including a bushy-bearded aide-de-camp (Robert Pattinson). As Fawcett travels down the river, he discovers what he believes to be tangible signs of a lost civilization that may have predated the English. In spite of traveling back to the mainland, his wife Nina (Sienna Miller), and their growing family, Fawcett’s unable to shake the notion of what he calls the “final piece” of the puzzle of humanity, this city he dubs “Z.”
Even more than those jungle-set dramas named above, The Lost City of Z is methodical and deliberate; it’s a carefully paced 140-minute film so that Fawcett’s decades-long journey – which includes serving on the front lines in World War I – feels as all-encompassing to the audience as it does to him. Hunnam bears the weight of that journey well; his performance represents a massive step up from his previous work in TV shows like Sons of Anarchy and genre pieces like Crimson Peak. Fawcett never descends into outsized madness like Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, yet he’s just as unwavering and confident in ways that border on self-defeating arrogance.
Gray’s script, based on the book of the same name by David Grann, allows for more nuance than another film might in presenting an extremely dedicated man who essentially ignores his family in favor of his personal ambitions. It’s a welcome surprise that, through the screenplay and Miller’s layered performance, Nina isn’t occupying the role of the hectoring wife and mother; the arguments she and her husband have present her as equal to Fawcett, if not more, as his relatively enlightened viewpoint on race relations doesn’t extend to those of gender. There’s similar nuance to the relationship that Fawcett has with his oldest son, Jack (played as an adult by Tom Holland). When Jack accuses his father of having been totally, inexcusably absent, the older man lashes out violently; it’s only when Jack expresses interest in journeying to South America that his father becomes more effusive than ever before. Even in these small strokes, the film is truly haunting. That quality extends to the final section of the film and if you haven’t read the book, you should go in cold.
The Lost City of Z thrives because it’s always able to maintain a careful distance between its depiction of its protagonist and his desires. The allure of the jungle is impossible to escape for Percy Fawcett, but James Gray’s film is able to detail why Fawcett couldn’t stop himself from traveling to the heart of earthly darkness without overtly valorizing him. This is a remarkable film, filled with sumptuous visuals, an almost Kubrickian fastidiousness, and a solid central figure. It’s a balancing act between the arthouse and the epic, an enormous achievement./Film Rating: 9 out of 10
