The Lost City of Z
(2016)
(SPOILERS) It’s probably no coincidence that the two films
I’ve enjoyed most in the last couple of months have adopted an expressly
stately pace, slipping effortlessly into the style and narrative form of features
of yesteryear. That might be interpreted as a symptom of getting older and failing
to appreciate a frenzied assault on the senses the way I once might have, but I
suspect it rather derives from surprise and appreciation that this kind of
picture still has a place (if not necessarily a wide audience), and that, when
it suits the material, the results can still be impressive. The Lost City of Z, like Blade Runner 2049, has variously been
described as long-winded and boring, but contrastingly, I found it an immersive,
rewarding experience, one that wrestles valiantly with the problems inherent in
adapting a decades-spanning, unresolved historical tale.
Indeed, I may have done James Gray something of a disservice
by tending to avoid his pictures in the past. I recall being underwhelmed by We Own the Night, assuming he belonged
to the Gavin O’Connor brand of serviceable but undemanding character-based crime
genre directors. Gray admits, however, that Z
is something of a departure for him, and he was unsure why Brad Pitt’s Plan B
approached him with the project (Bradley did better than me, since I began
reading David Grann’s account of Captain Percy Fawcett’s Amazon expeditions but
failed to finished it). While Gray may not bring the same identification with, and
eye for, the environment that, say, Werner Herzog or John Boorman have
previously, this may be in part a function of the need to retreat from the
jungles periodically and stick to the broad outline of the story itself.
As always with the Hollywood movie, though, one has to
navigate the ins and outs of fidelity to the facts, and as always (or usually)
the ultimate test resides with “Is it a good movie regardless?” This has been
true for past explorer biopics (1492:
Conquest of Paradise, for example; it’s a long time since I saw Mountains on the Moon). To read John Hemming’s take on the historical figure, you’d think Fawcett had massacred his
entire family (he evidently has a bee in his bonnet over what he perceives to
be Grann’s numerous and flagrant fabrications). Was Fawcett in fact an
ill-prepared idiot, and an ill-prepared racist idiot at that, who got what was
coming to him? Hemming certainly thinks so and has been backed up in the “blundering and racist flake” stakes by
others who have been there (the rainforest), so “know” (it’s with a case like
this that the problem with going to a Hollywood “fact vs fiction” site presents
itself; they aren’t really researching, merely quoting opinion pieces such as
Hemming’s. As am I, of course, but I’m not holding myself out as a bastion of
accuracy).
While I’m not sure Gray’s (commendable) willingness to engage his critics quite gets to the nub of this issue (I suspect the attacks
on Fawcett have more to do with professional elitism than class, although those
areas may intertwine), one real tester of adverse claims is if alterations to
the record leaving one feeling one has being taken out of the movie. It’s a
cliché to use “product of the time” to defend unenlightened views in an
individual one wishes to esteem in some way, but in this case, it could be
argued that it serves the plot motor to transpose Fawcett’s conceptual problems
with what he saw as primitive savages existing upon the remains of an advanced
civilisation onto his peers at the Royal Geographical Society.
It’s when Gray conflates this with bursts of not only
progressive views on race and culture but also the environment and gender
equality that one feels the writer-director may be laying it on a bit thick (although,
to be fair, the portrait of Nina Fawcett appears to have been at least partially
accurate, and Gray does much better in showing Percy’s limited flexibility around
this subject than elsewhere).
Gray expressly wanted to get across “an evolved sense of politics”, but I think he underestimates the
medium if he feels he needs to achieve that by making his characters lily-white
advocates of his own views. Nevertheless, the scenes where Fawcett wittily
presents his views to get the Society onside, or stands up for his beliefs (and
friends) when the entirely trashed arctic explorer James Murray (Angus
Macfadyne, great), who has proved a wretched impediment to their expedition and
been rid of, turns up demanding apologies and reparations, are rightly rousing.
Indeed, many haven’t been at all sold on Charlie Hunnam’s
performance (Pitt, then Benedict Cumberbatch were lined up to play Fawcett at
various points), and I can entirely relate if you’re talking Pacific Rim, say, but he really meets
the challenge of portraying the unflappable, dedicated explorer. Certainly,
though, if you don’t buy into him, it’s unlikely the picture as a whole will
yield approval. Whenever Gray is in the jungle, The Lost City of Z is fascinating, but there just isn’t enough of
it, and the intrusion of World War I in particular breaks the flow.
There are many fascinating aspects of Fawcett’s life closer
to home, but Gray appears cautious about how much he can deliver. We have a
rather clumsy scene in the trenches at the Somme (while Fawcett commanded
heavily artillery at Flanders, he didn’t go over the top at the Somme, or get
blinded by mustard gas) when an occultist – complete with Ouija board – reads
to him, but it’s insufficient to relay how much a flavour of the time such
interests where, or that Fawcett was a Helena Blavatsky enthusiast (“charlatan psychic” as Hemming calls her,
which as bluntly dismissive a summation as you get) – his brother Edward
assisted her in preparing The Secret
Doctrine – and shared his arcane passions
with Arthur Conan Doyle and Rider Haggard.
He also advocated Z as an outpost of Atlantis and believed his
son Jack was the reincarnation of an advanced spirit (one theory has it that Fawcett
never intended to return home, but instead to set up a commune in the Amazon dedicated
to worshipping Jack). While it’s understandable that Gray didn’t want his hero
to appear a complete fantasist, he arguably forwent the more fascinating
depiction of the character. For Gray, it’s enough that Fawcett had a dream, one
that has (in part) been vindicated.
If Hunnam rises to the occasion, so does Robert Pattison, sporting
a mighty beard as Henry Costin, right hand explorer to Fawcett, and continues
his flair for strong character work that began with Cronenberg collaborations. Sienna
Miller is strong as Nina Fawcett, swallowed into her own jungle of the mind at
the end, while Tom Holland gets rather short shrift as son Jack, required to go
from young rebel to young apprentice without anything much to tell you the hows
and whys.
On the debit side, you’re also consistently aware that this
is epic storytelling on a budget, from Fawcett hacking through undergrowth that
doesn’t need hacking to coming across the grand opera house of Franco Nero’s
baron (it’s like something out of Apocalypse
Now, but occurs much too early to have any kind of bewilderingly,
hallucinogenic quality). This feeling of the curtailed means that the adverse elements
– the disease, the desperation, the starvation – aren’t allowed sufficient time
to set in, and you’re left wanting more.
But Darius Khondji’s photography is splendidly transporting
– this definitely needed to be on film stock, not digital – and adds to the
sense that Gray’s picture could have been shot thirty years ago, unaffected by subsequent
cinemtatic styles and trends. Christopher Spelman’s score adds to that feeling,
unhurried and ennobling.
The greater emotive force of the film is Fawcett’s self-awareness
of his obsession and that it could not be fought. He doesn’t even struggle internally
with himself, except rhetorically, such that any right-minded man would have put away foolish dreams
of a return to the jungle with his offspring in tow. There’s a sense of
inevitability to the final mission (he went on more than the three depicted
here, but 1925 was where it culminated), and Gray allows for non-commital
creative licence in interpreting the fates of Fawcett and his son (to make this
a more personal affair, their other companion, Raleigh Rimmell, has been excluded).
He also instils a certain admirable quality into Fawcett’s acceptance of whatever
is coming (“So much of life is a mystery,
my boy” he movingly comforts his son “And
you and I have made a journey other men cannot even imagine”). I was
reminded a little of the dreamy melancholy of Barbet Schroeder’s La Vallée
(after writing this I checked in on Mark Kermode’s review, only to hear him also
namecheck it; I’d say something about great minds thinking alike, but I don’t
like skiffle).
As to whether Fawcett’s end was then, well, at least as much of the ongoing attraction of his
story relates to his fate as his elusive city. For Hemming, it’s an open-and-shut
case (despite his source for this being unreliable). The picture’s note of
ambiguity comes with a returned compass, strategically positioned by Gray such
that it’s proof to Society member Keltie (Clive Francis) that Fawcett lives (in
which case, the ceremony with his son surely constitutes a spiritual death and
rebirth). I find Fawcett’s returned signet ring more compelling, whatever the
truth there may be (Hunnam’s take, interestingly, is that he was murdered for
his possessions by white party/ies unknown).
So Gray might have made a more illuminating picture about a
flawed man of his time, one obsessed with Atlantis and theosophy and given to
seeing such notions reflected in the world around him, with all the
accompanying distortions that would likely ensue. What we get is undoubtedly
much more vanilla, and infused to its moderate detriment with contemporary
mores on the part of its director. Which doesn’t mean The Lost City of Z isn’t a curiously commanding, lingering
experience on its own terms, and that its elegiac pace isn’t something of a
balm.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.