The Lost City of Z dir. by James Gray (review)

The movie version of David Grann’s bestselling book, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, has finally made its way into movie theaters. Called simply The Lost City of Z, the movie tells the true story of British explorer Percy Fawcett’s career as a military man and explorer. The film does not attempt to tell every detail of Fawcett’s life, omitting any reference to his careers as a naval engineer or artist.

Following a chronological timeline beginning in 1905, in the opening scene we first encounter Fawcett as a young husband, father, and a major in the British Army stationed in Ireland. In a bit of foreshadowing of the massive conflict to come in the following decade, Archduke Franz Ferdinand is a guest at a hunting party, where Fawcett displays his accomplished marksmanship by making the kill. At the ball following the hunt, we learn that the reason Fawcett isn’t celebrated as the hero of the hunt is his unfortunate family background. Not only did his philandering, alcoholic father disgrace the family name and burn through its fortune, but he managed to stall his own son’s military career.

Not long afterward, Fawcett is given an opportunity to participate in a Royal Geographical Society mapping expedition to the Amazon rainforest, due to his training in surveying. Anxious to redeem his family name and advance his rank in class-conscious England, he agrees to the expedition, although it requires him to leave his son and pregnant wife behind for what could be years. We, the audience, follow Fawcett and his crew across the ocean to South America, first to a remote but prosperous rubber plantation, then deep into the rainforest for the first of what will be three journeys to Bolivia detailed in the movie.

While it doesn’t dwell on them, the movie doesn’t shy away from showing some of the ugly realities of the treatment the native peoples of the Amazon receive at the hands of the British imperialists as well as Portuguese plantation owners, both as slaves and as enemy combatants. Fawcett emerges from the rainforest, after a harrowing but ultimately successful mission, a changed man. The glimpses he caught of an advanced society previously unknown to Europeans have captured his imagination and consumed him. However, the RGS isn’t quite ready to give up their view of the Amazonian people as inferior savages.

At this point in the movie, Fawcett’s focus changes from elevating his status in British society to finding what he believes to be the Lost City of Z (pronounced zed by the English). The pursuit of his new fascination causes trouble in most aspects of his life, including his marriage, relationship with his children, and his career, but he persists, returning again to the Amazon on another mission, this time accompanied by James Murry, a highly respected rival adventurer and leading member of the RGS, and whose inability to handle the physical stress ultimately dooms the expedition.

After this second expedition, the pace of the movie changes, skipping over years at a time, taking us quickly through World War I, years living in the countryside, and ultimately Fawcett’s final, ill-fated expedition back to Bolivia with his now-grown son. Although some sort of story compression is likely necessary to keep the movie to a reasonable running time, the timeline jumping ahead at irregular intervals feels rushed at times. Another side-effect is that there are details omitted that make the story puzzling, possibly as a result of deleted scenes.

This is a film that attempts to do a lot in a short period of time. Where it succeeds best is telling a compelling story with heroes and villains. It has some powerful moments when it delves into the complicated relationships between fathers and sons or husbands and wives, but left me wishing for more depth in that regard. A further exploration of the feminist themes that come to light when his wife, who helped...