The Lost City of Z (James Gray, 2016)
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Edward Ashley, Angus Macfadyen, Ian McDiarmid, Clive Francis, Pedro Coello, Franco Nero. Screenplay: James Gray, based on a book by David Grann. Cinematography: Darius Khondji. Production design: Jean-Vincent Puzos. Film editing: John Axelrad, Lee Haugen. Music: Christopher Spelman.
A New Yorker profile of James Gray, keyed to the release of his much-anticipated Ad Astra, sent me in search of his earlier films, none of which I had seen. I lighted first on The Lost City of Z, which I had earlier ignored, in large part because of its title: It sounded like one of those campy adventure movies spoofing the genre epitomized by King Solomon's Mines and pretty much done to death by the Indiana Jones series. I admit that the Z in the title also made me think it had something to do with zombies. Anyway, how can we take movies about explorations in the Amazon seriously after Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo (1982)? But The Lost City of Z turns out to be a pleasant surprise: an old-fashioned adventure story played straight and done well. I think it could have used an actor of more heft and charisma than Charlie Hunnam in the lead -- it was originally planned for Brad Pitt (who stayed on as producer after a schedule conflict) and then for Benedict Cumberbatch, either of whom might have filled the part of the obsessive explorer Percy Fawcett better. But Gray handles a sprawling story -- we get not only scenes of Amazonian hardship but also of the Battle of the Somme in World War I -- with finesse.