Charlie Hunnam makes a commanding flawed hero as British Amazon explorer Percy Fawcett in a sweeping giant screen epic, filmed with rare intelligence by writer/director James Gray. With Sienna Miller and Robert Pattinson.
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The grandeur of this movie is off the charts. For a certain kind of old-school film fan, someone who believes in shapely, classical proportions and an epic yarn told over time, it will be the revelation of the year.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2017
The Lost City of Z 2016
Aug 22 | | ||
Aug 27 | |
In the early 20th century British explorer Percy Fawcett made eight expeditions into the Amazonian jungle pursuing evidence of a lost, highly evolved civilisation. James Gray’s spectacular film collapses those expeditions into a tidier history, but the enquiring spirit of the movie holds closely to the wanderlust of the incurable adventurer. It’s hard to think of another film on such epic scale that contains so careful and nuanced a portrait of the explorer hero or his conflicted relationship with the society that he, in name at least, represents.
Charlie Hunnam’s Fawcett is a commanding slow burn from class resentment to mystic quest, with Robert Pattinson barely recognisable as his companion in adventure. Sienna Miller makes a powerful impression as the wife chaffing to join him but forever left behind. Cinematography by Darius Khondji (Se7en, Delicatessen) captures the seductive allure of jungle and river in ravishing imagery fit only for the giant screen.
“The Lost City of Z is a miraculous movie, at once moving, intimidating, and gorgeous to behold. It’s a tale of colonial exploration that’s aware of the sins of the past, and a portrait of a driven, obsessive, flawed male protagonist that avoids the clichés of the genre. It feels like a work of classic Hollywood cinema, but without the arch, mannered quality that can come with a contemporary director trying to harken back to the past. Gray’s film is beguiling and poetic, capable of gluing you to the screen for every second of its languorous running time and lingering in the brain for weeks after.” — David Sims, The Atlantic