The Lost City of Z (15)

Three stars

Dir: James Gray

With: Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson

Runtime: 141 minutes

IT is always nice to welcome a new face to the business, so say hello to one Brad Pitt. Yes, that one. After a long career in front of the cameras, the 53-year-old is enjoying a new run of success with his production company, Plan B. So glad the retirement plan worked out, Brad: we were worried there for a while.

Fresh from the – eventual – Oscars triumph of Moonlight and 12 Years a Slave, Plan B’s latest offering is The Lost City of Z, the true story of British explorer Percy Fawcett and his determination to prove that Amazonia, far from being a “green desert” in which nothing of import exists, was in fact home to ancient civilisations from which humankind could learn much.

Epic, ambitious, handsomely crafted, with flashes of Terrence Malick and a Brad Pitt lookalike in British actor Charlie Hunnam in the lead, there is much worth exploring in James Gray’s action adventure. It is just a pity that as ripping yarns go it has a fatal flaw: it does not rip. There is plenty of meandering, drifting, detours, and contemplation, but ripping? Alas, no.

A sign of the leisurely progress Gray intends to make comes early on. Starting his tale in Cork in 1905, there is much he wants to sketch in about Fawcett (right stuff, wrong family; his determination to serve his country; the class-bound society of the times) before the exploring begins. By the time Fawcett finally packs for his first trip to Bolivia the viewer could be forgiven a slight weariness, and we haven’t even left the house yet.

The men in suits in London want Fawcett to draw a map that could prevent a war and keep profits flowing. He wants to discover what lies beyond the existing maps. On returning to London after years away he tells his fine gentlemen backers that he may have glimpsed ancient civilisations worthy of their respect. How they laugh. So begins Fawcett’s lifelong struggle for his ideas to be taken seriously.

Based on the book by David Grann, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, Gray’s picture does not stint in showing Fawcett’s determination to prove his case. There is much sweat, blood, and a fair few tears in this tale, not that Fawcett is seen to shed much of the latter. That job goes to the children who miss him and the wife, Nina (played by Sienna Miller), he leaves behind for years at at time. Gray (We Own the Night, Two Lovers) does well to show the impact Fawcett’s obsession had on his family without making him out to be unthinking or unkind. Much of that is due to the performance of Miller, whose character’s upper lip often matches her husband’s for stiffness. When she does question his determination to keep going we can appreciate the price she has paid for his adventuring.

Fawcett is portrayed as a man obsessed, but Hunnam shows him to be more complicated and interesting than that. We see his mettle being tested in the most extreme of conditions, particularly after, desperate as ever for cash to fund his expeditions, he agrees to take along a wealthy passenger (Scotland’s Angus Macfadyn) to accompany his usual team of Henry Costin and Arthur Manley (Robert Pattinson and Edward Ashley).

Onwards we plough. For the most part it is no hardship, with several scenes of real beauty and dreamy wonder as Fawcett ventures ever deeper into the jungle, submerging himself in its otherworldly sights and sounds.

After a time something strange begins to happen. Just as Fawcett’s expeditions settle into a rhythm, so the picture, then the viewer, follows and far from wishing the journey over, we cannot wait to see what happens next. So much so that by the end, just as Fawcett has been going long enough to eventually take his first born son, now a teenager, with him, it seems a pity for the picture to end. One could never had envisaged feeling that at journey’s start.