Die versunkene Stadt Z

It's very rare in 2017 Hollywood that we get an epic like The Lost City of Z. Albeit noticeably flawed in many aspects, this film hearkens back to the days where exploration epics were a normalcy in the filmmaking world.

The strengths of The Lost City of Z lie with its unique journey the protagonist takes, and not necessarily with the protagonist or the film itself. What I mean by that is that I think the actual story the film is based on is more interesting than how the film portrays it. Sometimes biopics that span a great length of time are difficult to effectively portray on the big screen. Because 'Z' takes place over the course of roughly 20 years, it becomes increasingly tough to grapple onto something worth enjoying. Every time one of his explorations seems to get interesting, we get interrupted by his abrupt return to civilization and more family drama. Whether or not that's how the true story of Percy Fawcett went is irrelevant. Sometimes it takes some tweaking to make for an entertaining feature length film.

Charlie Hunnam plays Fawcett, an explorer who seeks glory in finding a mysterious city of people which has "never been touched by a white man". Fawcett himself is an interesting character, especially when the film dives into his own psychology and obsession over 'Z'. He's a lot like Matthew McConaughey's character from Interstellar, always searching for something nobody has seen before even if means leaving his family for years at a time. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Fawcett isn't very likable. We constantly see him leave his family even though, with the exception of war, he has a choice in the matter.

There is something to admire about someone, or in this case multiple people, who keep searching for the dreams no matter the cost. Fawcett, along with a few consistent compadres, go on dangerous expeditions through the jungle to find what they think is a real lost city. The aspects of the film I enjoy the most are watching men go through hardships in search of something they truly care about. In this regard, the film is a fascinating exploration physically and mentally.

Aside from Hunnam, there are a few great performances from Sienna Miller as Nina Fawcett, Robert Pattinson as Henry Costin, and Tom Holland as Jack Fawcett. All elevating each scene they are in and making the journey worth it for sure. There's a lot this film does well, including making a lasting impact on viewers minds in terms of exploration, but the writing can be a little bit more polished with certain changes made to fit a movie and not just serve the story properly. There's a happy medium there that I think could have benefited the final product.

+The Story

+Brings back a lost genre

-Uncharismatic characters

-Uneven script

6.7/10

Screenplay jumps from one segment of Fawcett's life to another, without a lot of connexion.

I didn't really object to this film's two and a half hours long run time, I just wish more time would have been spent in the jungles, searching for the lost city, because when they're in the jungles, the film works well, as unseen natives launch arrows at them, and their rocky trip through some rapids, and the film is well worth watching for those scenes. More of the screenstory should have dealt with this, as well as the jungle natives themselves.

Instead, the first fifteen minutes are unrelated hunting stories, and it later veers off into feminist ramblings for one lengthy scene, and a completely out of place, and needless sequence on a WWI battlefield, which seems to occupy about fifteen minutes of the run time as well, and for what purpose? It seems like the filmmakers had abandoned the premise of searching for a lost city, and padded the plot out with these scenes, and as a result, the search for a lost city only makes up about 40% of the movie.

There are occasional questions of whether the explorers are more savage than the natives, but even that doesn't seem to go anywhere, as the film will quickly go off into a different direction.

This is (or should be, anyway) a film where its setting and location should become a character in its own right (like the jungles in Predator, or the building in Die Hard, or the hotel in The Shining) but we see so little of it that it could just simply be an overgrown section of land in Hawai'i.

It's one of those labor of loves it seems as the film felt like it was more interested in making an artistic narrative than it was about making money. I can respect that, but it was a boring movie for that reason.

The Lost city of Z is about a British explorer named Percy Fawcett who while on a survey mission in the amazon discovers evidence that the "savages" once had a civilization the might even be older than the one he came from and spends his life trying to find it.

I loved Charlie Hunnam in it. Hands down, his most grown up acting performance, and really made Fawcett a compelling man to follow. In fact the whole cast was impressive with Sienna Miller as Fawcett's wife and Robert Patterson who I totally did not recognize under the bread as Fawcett's most trusted companion on his trips. Tom Holland is also in the movie as Fawcett's oldest son who joins him on his last journey to the amazon. Other people gave great performances, but these are the ones I knew by name, making it a pretty stellar cast for me.

While this movie does such a great job making Fawcett's life look fascinating,following him through his time with the army to his time as an explorer, I must admit that the slow burn of the narrative almost put me to sleep. It reminds me of another project Brad Pitt (who produced the movie) was evolved in, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Though the Lost City of Z is not as painfully slow (Notice the tile is half that of the Jesse James movie), the combination of the quiet tone and it's speed was not something I wanted to sit in a movie theater and watch. It's not that the movie is long, it's that it feels long, and it feels like something that the movie does on purpose.

I feel like the movie tries to gives us the realest accounts of a man's life as they can and I can respect that, but man, the two hours and thirty minutes this film comes in at was not easy at all to get through. That's just my warning.

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Having not known quite what to expect from this movie - had it been made anytime before 30 years ago that might have been easier - I actually found it fascinating, and it held my attention the whole way through. Based on a true story, it paints a vivid picture not only of the Amazonian region which Percy Fawcett and his men set out to explore, but also of the Western society they came from, but in a fairly balanced way - this didn't feel like another case of 'weren't Western white people before 1980 all absolutely dreadful' but rather a portrayal of a society with its own beliefs and attitudes (as all societies have) faced with the prospect of discovering another, much older, civilisation.

This wouldn't be a film for fans of action movies as such. Instead it offers a fascinating study of place, society and the often slow and hazardous process of discovery and its effect on the people - all of the people - involved.

That the movie succeeds is a credit to Hunnam, who comes of age both literally and figuratively in this movie with a performance of great humility, charm, and grit. A far cry from his breakout role as a motorcycle gang leader, and an even further cry from his awkward performance in Guy Ritchie's unique (and hopefully never-to-be-repeated) view of young King Arthur as a slum thug.

Props to audiences worldwide who are connecting with a 2 hour and 20 minute opus that is as far from the new Transformers attempt as the earth is from the moon. Shows that quality film-making will always find an audience.

Would have been nice if the script were historically accurate but perhaps that is asking too much.

Ironically, because of the internet, the amount of solid new archaeological evidence being released each 24 hours in today's world would be the equivalent of ten years of time in Fawcett's era. In particular, I am referring to the material of late which suggests lost civilizations submerged in both the Atlantic and the Pacific over 12,000 years ago (see Graham Hancock's lectures for more, most free on Youtube) would explain how Brazil, centered between the two, could indeed have hosted a "lost city" which, thousands of years ago, entertained guests from both realms.

Finally -- for hard-core history buffs only -- the written diagrams preserved even today in the Archives of Rio de Janeiro ("Folio #512") which constitute the last known "communication" from the ACTUAL final, ill-fated, Fawcett expedition were discredited because "experts" of the day claimed they contained elements of different language roots, not one root, and hence "must" be fake. However, if indeed the area was a centerpoint between two now-lost civilizations originating in two different oceans, the multiple language roots would be expected and natural, and not an indication of fraud. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))