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The film “The Lost City of Z” tells the story of an Englishman who is determined to locate an ancient city hidden deep within the Brazilian jungle. In reality, however, it’s about what happens when you reach a certain age and realize that your youthful dreams haven’t come true yet: you either lower your expectations a little or increase your intensity and charge harder in the direction of your obsession, realizing that maintaining momentum isn’t as simple as it used to be. Audiences who are already familiar with the true story on which the film is based will be able to enjoy it on a more immersive level, savoring the period details and debating whether they were accurately represented by writer and director James Gray (“We Own the Night,” “The Immigrant”), as well as whether the film is anti-colonial enough for modern tastes. What happens may be surprising to those who enter without having any prior knowledge of the story (a category that included myself). The sequence of events does not follow any pre-existing commercial movie template. What happens appears to be as random as life itself, yet it is unavoidable.
A British Army officer, played by Charlie Hunnam, leads expeditions into the Amazon jungle in the early twentieth century in search of the titular city, which he named Zed, or Z. The film is set in the early twentieth century and stars Charlie Hunnam. Fawcett hoped that the discovery of Z would support his theory that, contrary to the racist attitudes of the people who funded his expeditions, certain nonwhite civilizations were more advanced than any western society that existed at the time of the expedition’s discovery. Additionally, Percy had more introspective and personal motivations, chief among them the desire to establish himself as a respectable Englishman, especially after his father’s Army career was shattered by a blaze of alcoholic misbehavior (“He’s been rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors”) Percy would never describe himself in these terms, because Freudian self-analysis wasn’t a thing back then, but he is driven by a desire to prove that he is the polar opposite of his father in every way: a dependable officer, an important explorer, and a devoted family man, to name a few characteristics.
Percy’s last ambition, however, suffers a setback because he keeps returning to the jungle in the hopes of discovering the lost city. His wife Nina (Sienna Miller) is a proto-feminist, or at the very least more liberated than the majority of English army wives were in the early 1900s, when the film is set. When she refers to their marriage as a “partnership of equals,” it’s clear that she truly believes it, and that both Percy and the filmmakers acknowledge and respect her point of view. When Percy repeatedly leaves England for South America to lead a band of similarly obsessive men (including his best friend, Corporal Henry Costin, played by Robert Pattinson in a terrific performance), Nina observes that he is forcing her into the traditional role of supportive wife and caretaker to their children, and he is assuming that she will subordinate her own dreams (which he hasn’t asked about) to his.
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Gray has quickly risen to the top of my list of favorite American filmmakers. He possesses the ability to do what is known as “world building” in science fiction and fantasy, but he does so with real-life subcultures and locations rather than fictional ones. The fine details of grooming, dress, posture, and speech are meticulously observed by him and his production team, whether they’re imagining 1990s outer borough New York City in “Little Odessa” and “The Yards” or the turn-of-the-century Lower East Side in “The Immigrant.” The different ways that light falls on faces and the folds of clothing depending on whether a scene is illuminated by fluorescent lights, early oil lamps, a campfire, or the moon is even noticed by them. As in his other films, you never get the impression that you’re watching one of those prototypical Oscar-baiting period films where “every dollar is onscreen,” but everything feels a little too polished and meticulously staged in this one. Whatever the setting, whether it’s a fancy dress ball full of English Army officers and their partners and servants or a camp in the Amazon basin staffed with slaves and ruled by the Portuguese boss of a rubber trading company (Francisco Nero makes a brief but sensationally effective appearance in the film), “The Lost City of Z” doesn’t reveal a world so much as present it, albeit in a matter-of-fact manner, by having characters exist within it.
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The film’s attention to character, on the other hand, is more significant. On the visual level, Percy’s story is in keeping with a long-standing tradition of films about white Europeans traveling to “exotic” parts of the world and becoming sucked into their own obsessions. “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Apocalypse Now,” and several Werner Herzog classics are all referenced in the film; you even get a double-dose of “Apocalypse Now” and “Fitzcarraldo” when Percy and his explorers come across an opera house that was built to bring high European culture to the “savages.” It’s impossible to look away from the film without being reminded of the ironies, indignities, and cruelties of the time period.
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Deep in the film, there is a lengthy and unexpectedly gripping scene in which Percy tries to justify the need for another expedition to a roomful of peers who believe that South America is a land of exploitable subhumans whose natural resources are the only thing that the country is interested in. In terms of their casual viciousness and greed, the film doesn’t sugarcoat it, but it doesn’t transform Percy into a white savoir either. Percy is only marginally more sensitive than the people whose money and approval he seeks, as he has been throughout his career. He treats the Amazon tribespeople with dignity and affection, but they are ultimately just a means to an end, a means of bringing him closer to his goal of discovering the lost city of Atlantis.
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It is equally difficult to understand Percy’s behavior toward his family, which is admirable in some ways and appalling in others. He appears to be a kind and decent person, and he appears to be genuinely sorry for all of the grief he causes his wife, as well as guilty for allowing his children to grow up while he is away from them for years at a time. But he keeps returning to the jungle, and he eventually attracts his eldest son Jack (played as a teenager by Tom Holland) into his dream, seemingly unaware that he is taking advantage of the boy’s desire to be closer to a father who has never been present in his life.
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There are some issues with the film. There are times when Nina’s dialogue struggles to convince viewers in the twenty-first century that the character is fiery and self-sufficient. Percy can be a little too reserved and pleasant for the sake of the film. A depiction of trench warfare in World War I Europe, which forced Percy to interrupt his travels to South America, is appropriately harrowing but does not necessitate the use of so much screen real estate as is necessary. For the sake of narrative continuity, the war sequence concocts a way to group previously established characters together on the same battlefield, even though they weren’t all present in real life—a rare instance in which the film appears to be coddling the viewer.
Hunnam’s performance, on the other hand, is charming and lived in, and this is a superb film from beginning to end, scene after scene. Because it was shot by Darius Khondji (“Seven”), who is the best living cinematographer at recreating early man-made light sources, the film is aesthetically pleasing without ever being ostentatiously beautiful. In addition, it is knowledgeable about how to use actual historical events as metaphors for fundamental desires (to succeed, to redeem oneself). It never loses sight of the fact that these were real people whose words and deeds had consequences that should not be swept under the rug for the sake of a satisfying conclusion.
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