Movie Review—The Lost City of Z

The Lost City of Z
Theatrical release poster

by Peter J. O’Connell

The Lost City of Z. Released (USA): April 2017. Runtime: 141 mins. MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, brief strong language, and some nudity.     

Percy Fawcett had a classic British name and was one of those classic British explorers who became obsessed with reaching a certain goal. Burton and Speke sought the source of the Nile, for example, and Scott sought to be the first to make it to the South Pole. In Fawcett’s case the dream was to find the ruins of what he called the “Lost City of Z.” Now a film with that title, written and directed by James Gray, based on the book by David Grann, tells Fawcett’s story.

We first meet Percy (Charlie Hunnam), dashing and handsome, as an officer in the British army in Ireland in 1905. He rides in an elk hunt—as dramatically filmed as the famous fox hunt in Tom Jones (1963)—and brings down the elk but is snubbed by higher-ups at the after-hunt party given for Archduke Franz-Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary.

A year later, to improve his family’s social standing, Percy accepts an offer from the Royal Geographical Society to survey the border between Bolivia and Brazil, territory which is part of Amazonia, the vast and wild jungle region drained by the Amazon River. Percy completes this mission but along the way hears from a native scout tales of an ancient city in the jungle built by an advanced civilization. Percy initially dismisses these tales but becomes convinced of the existence of the city when he discovers some statues and pottery of an advanced nature. Finding the ruins of “Z” becomes his dream.

Percy is praised for his surveying achievements when he returns to England, where his wife, Nina (Sienna Miller), has given birth to their second son. Nina also has discovered in a college library a conquistador text that tells of a city deep in the Amazon jungle. Nina has become restless in the traditional role of homemaker and wants to accompany Percy on future expeditions. He sternly puts her “in her place.” No is his firm and final answer.

When Percy asks the Royal Geographical Society to back an expedition specifically to find the Lost City, he is raucously mocked— in some rather overdone scenes—by the group, which holds racist notions that the “savages” of Amazonia could not have created an advanced civilization. But after Percy persuades renowned biologist James Murray (Angus Macfadyen) to back him, the RGS also does.

The expedition turns disastrous. Natives attack the explorers, and Murray proves utterly unequal to the rigors of the trek. Murray is sent back, and Percy’s team forges on but is unable to find the Lost City. Returning to England, Percy has to answer accusations from Murray of abandoning him in the jungle. Percy resigns from the RGS rather than apologize to Murray. But Percy also has to deal with accusations from Nina and his older son, Jack (Tom Holland), that he is abandoning them in pursuit of Z.

At this point Percy’s family troubles fade as World War I breaks out, and he goes into the trenches of the Western Front. There in the midst of a horrific battle, he is blinded for a time by a poison gas attack. Jack now reconciles with his father.

In fact, after the war Jack determines to join his father in another expedition to find Z. Percy and the RGS also reconcile. The RGS agrees to co-fund the expedition with an American group led by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The RGS does not want to be upstaged by the Americans, who have become very interested in exploration in Latin America since the “discovery” of Machu Picchu by Connecticut’s Hiram Bingham.

The Fawcett expedition sets off in 1925, and we see them run into numerous problems, both geographical and human—hostility by natives. But do they or do they not find the Lost City of Z? Each viewer will have to decide for himself or herself!

Gray’s film is intriguing but not as intense an experience as it should be, given the nature of the story that it tells. Likewise, the performances are adequate but do not succeed in making the characters come across as charismatic as they should be for a story with an epic premise. Also, the cinematography for some reason has a gritty tone, appropriate enough one supposes for the scenes in cloudy Ireland or polluted Britain, but annoying for the Amazon scenes, which should be more vivid. As a film, The Lost City of Z seems rather a lost opportunity or, perhaps, an opportunity to catch some zzzzzzs.