The Lost City of Z – first look review

James Gray’s ambi­tious lat­est, The Lost City of Z, is an intox­i­cat­ing, sweep­ing colos­sus that hon­ours every qual­i­ty of move­ment, vision, and dynamism inher­ent in that dat­ed term ​“motion pic­ture.” Adapt­ed from David Grann’s 2009 chron­i­cle of the life and adven­tures of ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry British explor­er Per­ci­val Faw­cett, Gray’s long-ges­tat­ing pas­sion project trans­fers its subject’s exploits to the big screen and imbues them with some of the purest and most affect­ing movie-movie thrills with­in the writer/director’s entire body of work.

When we first meet Per­cy (Char­lie Hun­nam), he is a strap­ping British ranger and skilled car­tog­ra­ph­er with a con­tent­ed home life but with no medals to off­set his tar­nished fam­i­ly name, thanks in large part to the con­duct of his deceased father, a dis­graced drunk­ard and gam­bler. Gun­ning for bat­tle and redemp­tion, Per­cy is dis­ap­point­ed when the Roy­al Geo­graph­i­cal Soci­ety enlists him to remap land in Bolivia (“land of the prim­i­tives,” as one high­er-up pas­sive­ly describes it) in order to stop a ter­ri­to­r­i­al war between Bolivia and Brazil, a treach­er­ous assign­ment that will take years and draw him away from his young son and preg­nant wife (Sien­na Miller).

Accom­pa­nied by a rag­tag out­fit, includ­ing an aide-de-camp played by a wily, scrag­gly-beard­ed Robert Pat­tin­son, Per­cy plunges into his 1906 map­mak­ing mis­sion through the Ama­zo­nia region, only to find his atten­tion dis­tract­ed by a South Amer­i­can slave called ​“Willis” (Johann Myers), who descrip­tive­ly mur­murs about an ancient lost city of gold. After a per­ilous jour­ney of infight­ing, dimin­ished rations, and attacks from indige­nous tribesfolk, Per­cy and his crew find them­selves in unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry, filled with sophis­ti­cat­ed pot­tery and faces carved onto trees. Per­cy takes these find­ings as aus­pi­cious signs that the now-dis­ap­peared Willis was telling the truth about this hid­den civil­i­sa­tion, which he names Zed. He returns home as ​“England’s bravest explor­er” but is unable to shake his obses­sion. Years lat­er, he sets sail to find his lost city once and for all.

It isn’t hard to imag­ine any num­ber of film­mak­ers tack­ling Fawcett’s myth­ic lega­cy – Wern­er Her­zog, Ter­rence Mal­ick and even Steven Spiel­berg all spring to mind as direc­tors who could ful­fil both the vast visu­al scope and fabled roman­ti­cism of Fawcett’s thrill-seek­ing expe­di­tions. Even though Gray appears inca­pable of mak­ing the same film twice, there isn’t any­thing in his fil­mog­ra­phy which sug­gests him as an obvi­ous con­tender for such a mam­moth undertaking.

With The Lost City of Z, Gray announces him­self as one of world cinema’s most gift­ed clas­si­cists, a dis­tinc­tion evi­dent from the film’s very first moments, in which he sub­tly dis­rupts our expec­ta­tions dur­ing scenes that will res­onate with any­one who is even remote­ly famil­iar with Mas­ter­piece The­atre. A woman buck­les and strug­gles from beneath her corset. An alco­holic sub­stance skids across a grimy sink in the same direc­tion as the loco­mo­tive our pro­tag­o­nist embarks on in the fol­low­ing shot. The film opens with a thrilling break­neck hunt among British infantry in Ire­land, dur­ing which men and hors­es col­lapse and tram­ple over one anoth­er, a sequence of great beau­ty and violence.

Gray is aid­ed by the aston­ish­ing work of cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Dar­ius Khond­ji, who draws on the deeply-tex­tured, gold­en-hued aes­thet­ic of The Immi­grant on an equal­ly rich but far more expan­sive scale. Speak­ing of The Immi­grant, there is no sin­gle per­for­mance here to rival Mar­i­on Cotillard’s har­row­ing, silent era-evok­ing tour de force in Gray’s 2013 film. But all involved do a fine job of slot­ting into the peri­od while still man­ag­ing to stand out, par­tic­u­lar­ly Hun­nam who gives a dash­ing lead turn that makes the case for his repeat­ed­ly-deferred movie star­dom. Else­where Angus Mac­Fadyen has a ball as high-rank­ing explor­er James Mur­ray, who accom­pa­nies Faw­cett on his sec­ond expe­di­tion before jeop­ar­dis­ing the entire mis­sion with his inso­lence and unfit­ness. Sien­na Miller is very good too in a role char­ac­terised not sim­ply a sup­port­ive unit but as a self-styled inde­pen­dent woman who is barred from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the adven­ture both by soci­ety and her own husband.

That Gray hands the film’s entire end­ing to her, cul­mi­nat­ing in a final shot of breath-catch­ing and tear-sti­fling inven­tion, is at once a bold­ly emo­tion­al ges­ture and yet anoth­er indi­ca­tor of Gray’s rare film­mak­ing instinct. The Lost City of Z may be his most overt­ly con­ven­tion­al work to date, but there is noth­ing com­mon about the sheer scale of his ambi­tion. Like his own rest­less hero, Gray is unafraid to wan­der deep­er and deep­er into the jun­gles of his own imag­i­na­tion, an undaunt­ed explor­er who can see the won­ders that con­sume him and longs to show them so as to under­stand why.