Whereas the likes of Congo and The Legend Of Tarzan were action blockbusters, The Lost City Of Z is firmly planted an epic drama, one that retells a true story that spans decades and centers around Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam). As the story starts out in 1905, he's a man with a lot of accomplishments under his belt, including starting a family with his wife Nina Fawcett (Sienna Miller). But he still feels undervalued in society thanks to his lack of recognition by his colleagues and his ancestry (particularly his father's mistakes) that still haunt him and prevent him garnering the high-profile respect he yearns for.
He'll get his chance to be held in high regard after all these years though if he embarks on a dangerous mission that'll have him mapping out uncharted territory of South America on behalf of the Royal Geographic Society. Despite the fact that it'll take him away from his newly formed family (which will soon expand with another child) for multiple years, Percy sets off to this harsh terrain where few outsiders have ever traveled to and even fewer have survived. Once there, he finds evidence in the form of intricately made pottery that suggests the existence of something previously thought to be malarkey; an ancient city he dubs Zed. He becomes determined beyond all costs to track this legendary location down, with Zed becoming the white whale to his Captain Ahab.
This is a tale of obsession, with Percy's mind over decade upon decade becoming more and more fixated on discovering Zed. But don't go into this movie expecting a one-note depiction of a man's mania. The multi-faceted depiction of why Percy wants to discover this lost city so badly is one of the key components of James Gray's phenomenal screenplay. Most certainly, Percy wants to restore some luster to his tarnished family name but he's also looking to prove a number of members of the Royal Geographic Society wrong. These folks believe the lost city couldn't exist because there's no way non-white people could have ever created something so grand with their racial prejudices standing in the way of a potentially paradigm-shifting discovery, not the first (or last) time old-fashioned and hate-driven convictions stood in the way of accepting new pieces of Earth-shattering knowledge.
Diving into that particular facet of racial discrimination that informed many people's perception of foreign non-white individuals in the 19th and 20th century (and even still ripples through certain aspects of racial discrimination of non-white foreigners today) provides some unique and thoughtful motivation for Percy, whose seen first-hand how the people who live in these South American jungles are far from the one-note savage stereotypes a number of the old and young white guys at the Royal Geographic Society believe them to be. That piece of motivation for his obsession with the jungle alone has plenty of layers to it, but that's not even the only one that drives him after his first journey into the jungle. His time spent in the trenches in World War One also informs his desire to return to a place where he knows he can make history, where he knows he can ease his anxious soul.
It's a fascinating tale of one man's persistent compulsion told in a more subdued and layered manner than typical cinematic depictions of obsession are. Similar to James Gray's last film The Immigrant shed a realistic and poignant light on a situation most movies either don't deal with or handle in stylized terms (the plight of an immigrant woman trying to survive in a foreign territory like America), Gray creates a more nuanced humane depiction of obsession that stems from understandable burdens in contrast to conventional over-the-top caricatures of men consumed by singular goals. For instance, even in the midst of his most devoted time to his cause, Percy has no problem making friends and can even give up on the cause for an extended period of time,
But it's always there, lingering in his psyche. It will never leave him alone, not until he finds the lost city of Zed or dies trying. Portraying Percy is Charlie Hunnam and he is so incredible in the part, a true solidification of this guy's dramatic acting chops (do we still have to act like he was so abysmal in Pacific Rim when I personally found him plenty fine in this part?). Hunnam makes Percy a likable man in his initial scenes, the kind of fellow whose amiable and a proud family man but also a guy whose carrying a yearning for grander ambitions in his eyes. As the years go by, Hunnam is exceptional in depicting Percy's steadily increasing devotion to his cause of discovering Zed and a scene where he's stuck in a hospital bed after some wartime carnage, whispering about he must go back to the jungle, is heartbreaking in the way Hunnam plays the characters quiet obsession in this pain-ridden moment.
Also earning top marks in The Lost City Of Z for his work is cinematographer Darius Khondji, reuniting with Grey after they worked together on The Immigrant. Khondji takes full advantage of the visual opportunities offered by the South American jungles to create some captivating imagery that emphasizes just how majestic and entrancing this locale is to Percy's eyes. Similar to how Grey's script and Hunnam's performance convey a great amount of obssession with Percy as a character in subdued ways, Khondji has a tendency to get impactful visuals out of the smallest moments, such as Percy and his son leaving home against a pink-tinted sky or Percy tilting his head beneath his Bible that has been pierced with an arrow. His visuals stick in your brain for quite some time, just as the visions of the lost city of Zed captivate the mind of the beautifully written protagonist of the incredible drama The Lost City Of Z. If you were like me and thought James Grey couldn't possibly make a worthy directorial follow-up to his 2014 classic The Immigrant, I got great news for you. He totally did with The Lost City Of Z.
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