LOST CITY OF ZED MOVIE

By the course of that first, successful trip, The Lost City of Z has run its breath of ambition, desire, danger, and the promise of the unknown. The river preys on them, as do disease, hunger, and tribals who shoot unseen from the bushes.

As they set out, Gray and Oscar-nominated cinematographer Darius Khondji’s jungle is a living, breathing mystery, beating down on the men and their crew with its heat, humidity and undergrowth. Fawcett’s wife Nina (he calls her Cheeki, played by Miller) knows better than to stop him, despite their young son and another along the way.įawcett ventures into the jungle with Costin (an almost unrecognisable Pattinson), a loyal fellow armyman with some history of the area behind him. The Royal Geographical Society plays on those insecurities by dangling him a carrot he can’t refuse: a chance to become the first explorer to map Bolivia, especially its border with Brazil where England’s profitable rubber plantations lie, thus earning him name, fame, a rank and social position. He is a young Major in the British Army, trying desperately to shed the ill-repute of his father, and fearing he would never make it to the inner circle no matter his accomplishments. And for all its talk of having an “open mind” towards the natives, not influenced by the “bigotry of the Church”, its meagre, fleeting glimpses of the Amazon tribes don’t carry any new insights.Īt the start, circa 1905, Gray appears to have a good thing going, with Hunnam, a blond, strikingly and traditionally good-looking actor who grows on you, hitting all the right notes with Fawcett. In the process, the film’s early promise of a grand adventure in the traditional sense peters out over its long, 221-minute length. So earnest is Gray to establish clean motives for Fawcett that the fierce ambition for greatness that drives his early adventures is also shed along the way, for a general desire to discover something that would change mankind. Writer-director James Gray, adapting a book by David Grann, based on real-life soldier-explorer Percy Fawcett, imagines a kinder ending, a gentler world, and a nicer White man whose ideas sound jarringly closer to this side of the 20th century. Journey up the river, into the deep jungle, has rarely ended well (think Heart of Darkness, think corollary Apocalypse Now).

LOST CITY OF ZED MOVIE

The Lost City of Z movie cast: Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller The Lost City of Z movie director: James Gray

The Lost City of Z movie review: Charlie Hunnam doesn’t seem tortured enough and Sienna Miller seems too virtuous.

Lost city of zed