+ Most Undeserved Flop of the Year + Best Adventure of the Year + Best Jungle Movie of the Year + Best Ensemble of the Year
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| One of the tantalizing, beautifully realized posters for James Gray's The Lost City of Z |
The Lost City of Z is written and directed by James Gray (The Immigrant (2013)) and based on the non-fiction book by David Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Mayhem and Obsession (2010)).
Ambitious, adventure-seeking British officer Percy Fawcett is contracted by London's Royal Geographical Society early in the 20th century for a mission to the Amazon jungle of Bolivia to make surveys for mapping the area. This leads him on a quest for the mythical, ancient city of Z, which swallows up his life.
For every exploration and jungle-fascinated person out there, The Lost City of Z is an offering that should not be passed up. It is a grand work, an epic and a mighty good film.
Centrally stands Charlie Hunnam (Queer as Folk (1999-00)) as Fawcett. An inspiration both for Gray's visual direction and for Hunnam's performance may have been Luchino Visconti's masterpiece Death in Venice/Morte a Venezia (1971)) and Dirk Bogarde's supreme performance in it. Hunnam's incredibly well-shaped body moves with a calm grace, and his character is withheld in a remarkably composed state for most of the film. The story veers off to Fawcett's duty during WWI for a time, and in these scenes, I found myself struggling to believe in the cool composure of the man, coupled with the relatively well-looking company of soldiers he serves with in the trenches, which simply doesn't align with my understanding of the war.
Sienna Miller (High-Rise (2015)) is good as Fawcett's strong wife; Tom Holland (In the Heart of the Sea (2015)) is good and appropriately well-cut himself to be believable as their oldest son; Robert Pattinson (How to Be (2008)) is well cast as Fawcett's exploratory companion, and Angus MacFadyen (Assassins Run (2013)) brings a chill down one's spine as a wolf in sheep's clothing. The impressive cast also has Murray Melvin (Barry Lyndon (1975)) and Franco Nero (Bad Inclination/Cattive Inclinazioni (2003)) in tiny parts, and Ian McDiarmid (Sleepy Hollow (1999)) as a leader in the RGS.
Darius Khondji (Funny Games (2007)) is behind the absorbing photography. There are thrilling jungle scenes that quench the hunger for exoticism and Indians, but I found that the best scenes of the film are those taking place in the RGS in London, where Fawcett's ideas of a civilization among the South-American 'savages', which may well predate Western civilization, raises ridicule, outrage but eventually also makes for a reevaluation of the world and human beings. The epic, incredible story doesn't follow the usual three act structure, as Fawcett travels out and comes home more than once, but especially for fans of epics, this will simply be part of the treat that is The Lost City of Z.
Gray's film stands in the territory of films such as Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece Apocalypse Now (1980) and Werner Herzog's Cobra Verde (1987), which was also the scene for Ciro Guerra's recent masterpiece Embrace of the Serpent/El Abrazo de la Serpiente (2015). It does not achieve the great or masterful, but it is still very worth seeing and a huge undertaking impressively well done.
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Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 30 mil. $
Box office: 17 mil. $ and counting
= Not certain yet, but looks like a huge flop
[The Lost City of Z premiered 15 October (New York Film Festival) and runs 141 minutes. Plan B Entertainment sent Gray a copy of Grann's book before it was published. Brad Pitt and Benedict Cumberbatch were considered for the lead but both dropped out for other commitments, though Pitt remained onboard with his Plan B Entertainment company, acting as an executive producer. Filming took place in Colombia and in Northern Ireland, UK, including in Belfast, starting in August 2015. The film opened #28 in 4 theaters to a 110k $ first weekend in North America, where it peaked at #10 and in 866 theaters (different weeks), grossing a disappointing 8.5 mil. $ (50 % of the total gross). The international performance was similarly underwhelming; the 2nd and 3rd biggest markets where France with 2.5 mil. $ (14.7 %) and Spain with 1.8 mil. $ (10.6 %). The film enjoyed the luxury of a release in China, its 4th biggest market at 1 mil. $ (5.9 %), a highly unimpressive turnout. The film has yet to open in Australia (24 August), South Korea (21 September) and Argentina (28 September). It looks like it is continuing Gray's long history of flops (none of his 7 films have been theatrical hits), which makes it quite a gamble that Pitt has chosen Gray to direct his coming starring sci-fi movie Ad Astra. The Lost City of Z is certified fresh at 87 % with a 7.4/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Lost City of Z?
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