The Amazon rainforest is as salubrious as it is unforgiving, as mysterious as widely explored. We’ve all imagined a similar, almost clichéd, picture of the land and its indigenous inhabitants. The Lost City of Z paints the same shared image, but still manages to enrapture you, not just with its glorious depiction of the jungle but a deeply empathetic gaze.
An addition to Hollywood’s fascination with everything British, James Gray’s film is a biographical drama based on the life of English explorer and geographer Percy Fawcett. On a government mission to chart out the border between Brazil and Bolivia, Fawcett stumbles upon the trail for a lost city, a place he names ‘Z’. He spends the rest of his life returning to the Amazon periodically, obsessively looking for the land, which is believed to be more ancient that the European civilisations.
Dilemmas, conundrums
Fawcett’s story may not be the most known one, but is certainly one that deserves to be told on the big screen. Based on a book of the same name by David Grann, it has all elements to make a captivating adventure film. But it’s hardly a film that keeps you at the edge of your seat. Its appeal, and thereby its true success, lies in its depiction of the dilemmas and conundrums of a passionate explorer; a man torn between nationalism, familial problems, colonial entitlement and obstinate ambition.
The Lost City of Z could’ve easily reeked of British privilege but it instead throws open a debate about the distinction between ‘civilisation’ and ‘savagery’. Finding a new land is a matter of nationalistic pride for Colonial British. It’s a hold over someone’s history. But is a society merely as old as its documentation? Is a colonial nod essential to validate the sophistication, and even the existence, of an ancient civilisation? You wouldn’t expect an ‘adventure film’ to ask these erudite questions but The Lost City of Z is different: it is modelled around a man who forced the complacent Empire to introspect.
Fawcett’s story therefore deserves a fine actor to shoulder it and you have that in Charlie Hunnam. Robert Pattinson as his companion, Corporal Henry Costin, looks convincingly rugged but delivers a performance barely memorable. Sienna Miller, as Fawcett’s wife Nina, holds steady ground for a character whose potential wasn’t fully tapped.
Mini-series material
Moving at a languorous pace, the film could have just as easily been a mini-series. There is so much to explore, with each chapter of Fawcett’s life providing for an interesting episode. Despite its two hours 20 minutes run, the film skims through some of these chapters, making parts of his life seem staccato, especially during World War I. But that’s bound to happen when a film tries to squeeze in all the material available to it.
In an attempt to tell it all, the film may not provide for a venturesome experience but will certainly keep you thinking about the questions it raises, ones which could still be applicable to the human race, as it were a 100 years ago during Fawcett’s time.
