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"The Lost City of Z" is about an Englishman who's determined to find an ancient city in the Brazilian jungle. But it's really about what happens when you get older and realize that your youthful dreams haven't come true yet: you either ratchet expectations back a bit, or double down and charge harder in the direction of your obsession, realizing that it's not as easy to maintain momentum as it used to be. Viewers who are familiar with the true story the film is based on will enjoy it on an immersive level, savoring the period details and arguing about whether they were represented accurately by writer and director James Gray (" We Own the Night ," " The Immigrant "). as well as whether the film is anti-colonial enough for modern tastes. Those who don't know anything about the tale going in (a category that included me) might be gobsmacked by what happens. The order of events doesn't stick to any established commercial movie template. What happens feels as random yet inevitable as life itself.

Charlie Hunnam stars as Percy Fawcett, a British Army officer who in the first part of the 20th century led expeditions into the Amazon jungle to find the titular city, which he named Zed, or Z. Fawcett hoped that finding Z would prove his theory that—contrary to the racist attitudes of the same people funding his expeditions—certain nonwhite civilizations were more advanced than any western society in existence at the same time. Percy also had deeper, personal motivations, chief among them to prove himself a respectable Englishman, especially since his father's Army career destructed in a blaze of alcoholic misbehavior ("He's been rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors," a superior officer says of Percy). Percy would never describe himself in these terms, because Freudian self-analysis wasn't a thing back then, but he is driven by a need to prove that he's the opposite of his father in every way: a reliable officer, an important explorer, a dedicated family man.

That last ambition takes a bit of a hit, though, because Percy keeps going back to the jungle in hopes of finding the lost city. His wife Nina ( Sienna Miller ) is a proto-feminist, or at least more liberated than English army wives tended to be in the early 1900s. When she speaks of their marriage as a partnership of equals, it's clear that she really means it, and that Percy and the movie respect her vision. But as Nina points out, when Percy repeatedly leaves England for South America to lead a band of similarly obsessive men (including his best friend, Corporal Henry Costin, a terrific character turn by Robert Pattinson ) he's forcing her into the traditional role of supportive wife and caretaker to their kids, and assuming that she'll subordinate her own dreams (which he hasn't asked about) to his.

Gray has become one of my favorite American filmmakers. He has the ability to do what's called "world building" in science fiction and fantasy, but with real subcultures and places. Whether he's imagining 1990s outer-borough New York City in " Little Odessa " and " The Yards " or the turn-of-the-century Lower East Side in "The Immigrant," he and his production team are phenomenally attentive to fine details of grooming, dress, posture, and speech. They even notice the different ways that light falls on faces and the folds of clothing depending on whether a scene is lit by fluorescent lights, early oil lamps, a campfire or the moon. Here, as in his other films, you never feel that you're watching one of those prototypical Oscar-baiting period movies where "every dollar is onscreen" but everything feels a bit too polished and carefully arranged. Whether it is re-creating a fancy dress ball filled with English Army officers and their partners and servants or a camp in the Amazon basin staffed with slaves and ruled by the Portuguese boss of a rubber trading company (a brief but sensationally effective appearance by Franco Nero ), "The Lost City of Z" doesn't unveil a world but merely presents it, in a matter of fact way, by having characters exist within it.

More important, though, is the film's attention to character. Visually, Percy's story is aligned with a tradition of films about white Europeans traveling to "exotic" parts of the world and getting swallowed up by their obsessions. There are unabashed nods to " Lawrence of Arabia ," " Apocalypse Now " and several Werner Herzog classics; you even get a double-hit of "Apocalypse Now" and " Fitzcarraldo " when Percy and his explorers come upon an opera house that was built to bring high European culture to the "savages." The ironies, indignities and cruelties of this era are never far from the film's mind.

There's a long, unexpectedly gripping scene deep in the movie where Percy tries to justify the need for another expedition to a roomful of peers who think of South America as a land of exploitable subhumans that's of interest only for its natural resources. The film doesn't sugarcoat their casual viciousness and greed, but it doesn't turn Percy into a white savoir, either. Here, as elsewhere, Percy is only slightly more sensitive than the people whose money and approval he seeks. He treats the Amazon tribespeople with respect and affection, but they are ultimately a means to an end, a way of getting him closer to his dream of finding that city.

Percy's behavior toward his family is equally complicated, admirable in some ways and appalling in others. He's a kind and decent individual, and he seems genuinely sorry for all the grief he puts his wife through, and guilty for letting his children grow up while he spends years away from them. But he still keeps going back into the jungle, and he eventually draws his eldest son Jack (played as a teenager by Tom Holland ) into his dream, while seeming oblivious to the fact that he's exploiting the boy's desire to get close to a dad who was never around.

The movie has its problems. There are moments when Nina's dialogue strains to convince 21st century viewers that the character is fiery and independent. Percy can be too recessive and nice for the film's own good. And a depiction of trench combat in World War I Europe, which interrupted Percy's trips to South America, is appropriately harrowing but did not need to take up as much real estate as it does. (The war sequence also contrives to place previously established characters together on the same battlefield for the sake of narrative continuity when they probably weren't all there in life—a rare case where the movie seems to be coddling the viewer.)

But Hunnam's performance is charming and lived in, easily the best work he's ever done, and scene for scene, this is a splendid film. As shot by Darius Khondji (" Seven "), who's better at re-creating early man-made light sources than any living cinematographer, the movie is beautiful but never ostentatiously pretty. And it's wise about how to use actual historical events as metaphors for basic desires (to succeed, to redeem oneself). It never forgets that that these were real people whose words and deeds had consequences that should not be swept under the carpet for the sake of a happy ending.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

The Lost City of Z (2017)

Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, brief strong language and some nudity.

141 minutes

Charlie Hunnam as Percival Fawcett

Robert Pattinson as Henry Costin

Sienna Miller as Nina Fawcett

Tom Holland as Jack Fawcett

Angus MacFadyen as James Murray

Johann Myers as Willis

Daniel Huttlestone as Brian Fawcett

Michael Ford-FitzGerald as Hunt Leader

Edward Ashley as Arthur Manley

Franco Nero as Baron de Gondoriz

Aleksandar Jovanović as Urquhart

Writer (based on the book by)

David Grann

Cinematographer

Darius Khondji
John Axelrad
Christopher Spelman

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The Lost City of Z Reviews

It cannot be understated: The Lost City of Z is a revelation.

Full Review | Dec 6, 2023

You can’t help but see shades of Herzog’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Fitzcarraldo”. Even touches of John Huston come to mind.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 23, 2022

The Lost City of Z contains a rare kind of grandeur and intimacy that only filmmakers like Lean or Anthony Minghella.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 4, 2022

James Gray's The Lost City of Z has moments that hearken back to any old Hollywood adventure epic, the grand journeys of yesteryear in which destination and discovery were the sole rewards.

Full Review | Feb 11, 2022

At over two hours, the film drags. Which is a shame, because a story this good deserves to be turned into an all-time classic.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 18, 2021

Deliberately old-fashioned in many respects, this uneven, episodic two-and-a-half-hour saga is nonetheless quite richly rewarding in the end.

Full Review | Oct 14, 2020

Regardless of whether or not The Lost City of Z provides the answers its pursuers seek, the journey to find Z provides enough meditations for a lifetime.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 24, 2020

In the case of James Gray's visually sumptuous and richly melodic film The Lost City of Z, it turns that actually sometime they do make them like they used to.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 24, 2020

An underrated biographical epic featuring a soulful performance from the cast, especially Charlie Hunnam as the protagonist. I appreciate the fact that it's more of a reflective character study than an action-packed adventure film.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 10, 2020

The Lost City of Z has a sumptuous and elegant epic it might be, doesn't quite justify all the effort put in by everyone involved.

Full Review | Jul 17, 2020

For a grand adventure, there's no grandeur and not a whit of adventure.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Jul 1, 2020

[The film] starts off underwater, but by the end it's breathing sweet, sweet air. Its redemption comes when we realize that the story isn't about Amazonian exploration at all.

Full Review | Jul 1, 2020

Director Gray strikes a remarkable balance between the family drama, the class and status struggle Fawcett goes through, and the actual explorations, and how different each journey is.

Full Review | May 6, 2020

It's a little long but just short of being a masterpiece. There is much to love about The Lost City of Z which is one of the best movies of the year so far.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 22, 2020

That the meetings of geographical societies used to be such animated affairs is one of the revelations of James Gray's film. Another revelation is that Gray has amazing classical chops.

Full Review | Jan 15, 2020

Instead of painting a dapper Indiana Jonesian picture of a valiant white man making friends with the natives and conquering the jungle, it shows Fawcett as self-obsessed.

Full Review | Jan 7, 2020

Grandiloquent, methodical, and fascinating, the new direction is becoming for Gray, who masterfully conjures a mysterious period of anticipation, when the world was uncharted and carried unimaginable secrets in its bosom.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 9, 2019

Percy Fawcett's persistence to follow his obsession continually tests his endurance and resolve. It's worth investing the 2 hour and 20 minutes to find out if he really found his lost city.

Full Review | Sep 10, 2019

Never cloying, never sentimental, yet grandly, heartbreakingly, full of hope.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 4, 2019

The Lost City of Z does not quite reach the apex of grace but its attempts to do so linger in the consciousness. Even when it fails to reach the excellence it aims for, it is moving.

Full Review | May 21, 2019

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Review: Hearts of Darkness and Light in ‘The Lost City of Z’

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By Manohla Dargis

April 13, 2017

In “The Lost City of Z,” a lush, melancholic story of discovery and mystery, a mesmerizing Charlie Hunnam plays a British adventurer in the Amazon who is consumed by “all the glories of exploration,” as Joseph Conrad once wrote of a different journey. Enveloped by the forest, the explorer and his crew face snakes, piranhas, insects and that most terrifying of threats: other people, who at times bombard the strangers with arrows. Undaunted, he perseveres, venturing more deeply into a world that first becomes a passion and then something of a private hallucination. It’s 1906, and while wonders like moving pictures are rapidly shrinking the world, the dream of unknown lands endures.

That dream isn’t only about the Amazon in “The Lost City of Z” but also about the movies and their ability to transport us to astonishing new worlds. For us, the Age of Discovery is long gone and, for the most part, so are old-fashioned historical epics, other than the occasional Chinese extravaganza or one of those international waxworks with clashing accents. Hollywood used to churn these out regularly, but they’ve faded, casualties of shifting industry logic, audience taste, cultural norms and other pressures. The romance of adventure has largely shifted from history to fantasy fiction, an easier, less contested playground for conquering white heroes.

In “The Lost City of Z,” the writer-director James Gray has set out to make a film in the colonial era that suggests the likes of David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia,” but through a sensitive, contemporary lens. It’s one that starts from the premise that while white men have long been the keepers of the historical record, they didn’t make the past single-handedly. The story that Mr. Gray has chosen seems an unlikely candidate for such revisionism because it turns on Lieut. Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett, who came to believe in the existence of a lost Amazonian civilization. He called it the lost city of Z; others called it El Dorado , a European illusion that proved catastrophic for the New World.

The movie opens shortly before Fawcett is approached by the Royal Geographical Society to map uncharted territory in Bolivia. A career soldier and son of a disgraced aristocrat, Fawcett is anxious to change his fortunes and increase his social standing. Leaving behind, rather too easily, his loving wife, Nina (Sienna Miller, wonderful), and their young son (later played by Tom Holland), he sets off and is soon struggling through the Amazon with a small crew that includes an aide-de-camp, Henry Costin (an excellent Robert Pattinson, shaggy and almost unrecognizable). Deep in a jungle, where each wonder is matched by terror, Fawcett is ravaged — and then transformed — by his discoveries of both a new world and another self.

Mr. Gray opens this world gloriously. As a director, he has an old-fashioned belief in cinematic beauty, in the charm and necessity of the perfectly lighted and framed face, the hauntingly darkened room, the grittily coarsened street. He’s a sensualist, and in “The Lost City of Z” he turns the Amazon into a ravishment for the senses. (The cinematographer, Darius Khondji , who goes dark brilliantly, shot Mr. Gray’s last film, “ The Immigrant .”) As Fawcett presses on, walking and sailing through dense shadow, streaming light and canopies of variegated green, the natural world comes fantastically alive with strange animal cries, stirring trees, roiling fog and frighteningly violent eddies.

In time, native peoples emerge from those trees, by turns watchful, threatening and welcoming. Much as he does throughout his Amazonian travels, Fawcett is enlivened by his encounters with the Indians. He’s a natural, somewhat surprisingly peaceful ambassador given his background and historical moment (even if his restraint also nicely suits Mr. Hunnam’s slow-burning charisma). When his expedition comes under siege at one point, he orders his men not to fire and instead waves a kerchief while calling out “Amigo!” It’s a stratagem, but Fawcett’s curiosity is boundless and he sees accomplishment and complexity in this world, which sharply goes against bigoted orthodoxies back home.

Mr. Gray, working from David Grann’s 2009 book, “The Lost City of Z,” glosses over Fawcett’s more noxious beliefs. Mr. Grann, for one, writes that Fawcett “escaped virtually every kind of pathology in the jungle, but he could not rid himself of the pernicious disease of race.” It’s no surprise that the real Fawcett was as fascinatingly contradictory as you might expect of a Victorian-born British explorer. Mr. Gray doesn’t soften all of these uncomfortable edges — there is arrogance and tinges of cruelty in this portrait — but he’s far more interested in what seems to have distinguished Fawcett, namely his passionate belief that Amazonian Indians were not the primitives the West insisted they were.

That passion sends Fawcett back to the Amazon several more times over the years, eventually becoming a kind of steadily devouring fever. He’s hailed as a hero after he returns from his first trip, but by the time he’s home he has a new child, whose birth he missed. This sets the template for his life, as Fawcett increasingly gives himself over to the Amazon and neglects his family, a familiar divide that Mr. Gray turns into the story’s axis point. In most movies of this type, the great man kisses the little woman goodbye and sets off. Here, partly because Fawcett repeatedly returns home, Nina emerges as a substantial narrative force and not only a reminder of what he’s willing to sacrifice.

Fawcett finds ecstasy in and out of the Amazon, as does Mr. Gray, who fills the screen with intimate reveries and overwhelming spectacle, including a harrowing interlude during World War I. Until now, Mr. Gray has tended to work on a somewhat modest scale, often with art films that play with genre. Here, he effortlessly expands his reach as he moves across time and continents and in the process turns the past into a singular life. There’s much to love in this film, but what lingers are those lapidary details that often go missing in stories about great men, as if they had built the world alone and no child had ever raced down a road waving goodbye as a father disappeared into history.

Movie Review: ‘The Lost City of Z’

The times critic manohla dargis reviews “the lost city of z.".

In “The Lost City of Z” a british cartographer explores the Amazon wilderness. In his review Manhole Dargis writes: The film is a lush, melancholic story of discovery and mystery. Director James Gray Gray opens this world gloriously. He has an old-fashioned belief in cinematic beauty, in the charm and necessity of the perfectly lighted and framed face, the hauntingly darkened room, the grittily coarsened street. He’s a sensualist and he turns the Amazon into a ravishment for the senses. There’s much to love in this film, but what lingers are those lapidary details that often go missing in stories about great men, as if they had built the world alone and no child had ever raced down a road waving goodbye as their father disappeared into history.

The Lost City of Z Rated PG-13 for arrow violence and colonial-era racist gibberish. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes.

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'The Lost City of Z' Review: James Gray Goes to the Amazon, Makes a Masterpiece

Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattison, and Tom Holland travel to the early 20th century and the discovery of civilization's origins in the Amazon in this meditative study of class, ambition, and death.

[NOTE: This is a re-post of our review from the New York Film Festival; The Lost City of Z expands nationwide, April 21]

There's a moment not all that long into The Lost City of Z that brings up an enigmatic, intimate element of the past, in a movie that very much pivots on the personal stakes of world history. Colonel Percy Fawcett, played with physical ingenuity and dramatic intensity by Charlie Hunnam , arrives back in England after a long stretch of keeping the peace in Ireland, a post he took after exploring Sri Lanka as a mapmaker. In a discussion that leads to his trip up the Amazon, to map an area of jungle on the border between Brazil and Bolivia, one of his senior officers ( Ian McDiarmind ) at the RGS speaks of Fawcett's father. More importantly, the officer suggests that Fawcett's work in South America could scrub out the stains of notoriety that have marked his family's name since the days of his father, whose crimes or assumed slights against society go undivulged in the film's narrative other than a passing mention of "the bottle."

From the outset, this humid, deeply human movie, directed by James Gray , comes on like a classic adventure tale, one where a governmentally decorated go-getter seeks discovery, excitement, and a sterling reputation in an unknown land where his life is worth little more than a possible dinner for a hungry local tribe. And to his credit, Gray delivers that movie with all the ribbons and bows on it. On his first expedition, he loses at least two colleagues to spears and another to a swarm of ravenous piranhas. At one point, he nearly dies the same way, near-blind and underwater. Gray, who has barely left the five boroughs in his previous films, has a quick taste for the exotic, verdant environs and his elegiac, gorgeous compositions, often tinted by yellow, blue-grey, and sickly green, convey the feeling of witnessing the past without putting the action at a remove. Strung together with accents, lingo, wardrobe, political and historical discourse, and a myriad of other detail-accurate ornamental elements, Gray's atmosphere never feels as if it's overworking to remind you of when this all takes place, and yet both the popular and personal opinions of the time are constantly teeming in the audience's head.

And yet, Gray's adaptation of David Grann 's beloved bestseller is a far quieter, more ruminative, and confidently intimate movie than all that would suggest. Quiet would not always be something you'd say as a compliment but in this case, it's crucial. Hunnam does give Fawcett a booming soldier's voice but it's used with measure and his main partner in his explorations, Henry Costin ( Robert Pattinson ), barely raises his voice above a sarcastic mumble or groan. The sounds of the world they are moving through, whether it be the domineering symphony of the jungle or the rhythmic bustle of city streets and stadiums of law. It's immersive without demanding your attention.

It also puts more of a focus on the discussions, which begin to center more and more on the discoverer's obsession with finding the beginnings of civilization in what he dubs the titular, hidden away realm, up the Amazon. This is the story of a true progressive in the political sense, refusing to believe that the aristocracy was the beginning and the end of all civilization, but Gray rightly sees the stubborn, vindictive, and lethally ambitious side of Fawcett as well. In fact, he highlights it. This is the story of a true progressive, but it's also the story of a man who needed the world to know that he was better than the class label that they stamped him with the minute he came into the world. Gray has always seen the ambitions of immigrant families and the generations that they beget as both beautiful and fatal, enlightened and damned. The obsessive love that Joaquin Phoenix 's burdened laundromat worker, Leonard, has for the hard-partying shiksa up a flight or two from him in Two Lovers is also a want to break from the traditionalism of his loving but deeply intrusive Jewish family. So, though there are spears, rafts, deadly animals, protective natives, and all other sorts of peril, Fawcett is in fact not all that dissimilar from the city boys that Gray tends towards otherwise in his oeuvre.

It's also, like those movies, a reflection of Gray's own struggles with being the son of immigrants and an artist in no short supply of artistic and commercial ambition. Gray's been one of the best American filmmakers around since the 1990s, when Little Odessa and The Yards established him as the pre-eminent post-Scorsesian New York filmmaker. Even those masterworks, mind you, couldn't clearly set the stage for Two Lovers and The Immigrant , two of the most alluring and near-confessional American films of this or any other decade. Still, Gray had intentions towards something bigger, something like a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, which he hinted toward in the jump toward period detail in The Immigrant . The Lost City of Z is a glorious, ambitious feat of filmmaking about an even more adventurous man who lost everything to his need to prove that he's better than their all-guiding class ranking, that they are wrong.

A character like Angus Macfadyen 's Murray, a wealthy, Wellesian adventurer who helps fund Fawcett's second voyage up the Amazon, after finding proof of early civilization in the form of pottery, doubles as a kind of disclosure about what it's like to work with an overbearing producer or another production colleague. And yet, he is a well-rounded character, given Shakespearean heft in physicality and delivery by Macfadyen, as is Fawcett's long-suffering wife, Nina, played with potent fury and humor by Sienna Miller . One of the film's best sequences is a simple bedroom chat between Fawcett and his beloved, wherein he demands that she not follow him on his second expedition through Bolivia with Murray. As open to the idea as Fawcett is when they initially speak about it, it's clear that even he depends, to a certain extent, on sexism and the reinforcement of gender roles. And her stunted career is only one of a few major sacrifices that the family gives to the idea of finding Z.

One would hope on the evidence of this movie, this masterpiece, that Gray would have studios lining up to back whatever his next movie might be, and its that where I think Fawcett's mysterious end, gone missing in the Amazon with his similarly courageous son, Jack ( Tom Holland ), might reflect Gray's feelings. The feeling of true purpose still seems to allude Fawcett up until the end, like a hard itch at the back of his cranium, lost in the jungle amongst tribesman that he cannot reason with. Does any endeavor to express an idea in any medium bring mental or physical sustenance? Gray remains ambivalent but not particularly hopeful through the lens of Fawcett, but as every writer you've ever read has written before, the journey is the thing. Gray doesn't even give the adventure of the story untainted glory but he gives what could have been an easy-bake nostalgia trip to Hollywood classicism—a la the original Mutiny on the Bounty — into something wholly contemplative, resonantly melancholic, wise, and cuttingly personal.

The Lost City of Z Is a Mysterious, Enthralling Masterpiece

James Gray’s exploration of the Amazon at the turn of the 20th century is the best work of his career.

An essential job of great epic cinema is to conjure the unimaginable for viewers, to create glorious sights and give them depth and context, to try and take in the beauty of the natural world while also grappling with its terrifying force. James Gray’s The Lost City of Z succeeds in this task. A film about venturing into the unknown, it delves into mysteries that will never fully be solved and digs into the mindset of an explorer. But beyond that, it wants to depict the search for meaningful fulfillment, to try and understand why someone might risk life and limb in pursuit of the sublime.

The Lost City of Z is a miraculous movie, at once moving, intimidating, and gorgeous to behold. It’s a tale of colonial exploration that’s aware of the sins of the past, and a portrait of a driven, obsessive, flawed male protagonist that avoids the clichés of the genre. It feels like a work of classic Hollywood cinema, but without the arch, mannered quality that can come with a contemporary director trying to harken back to the past. Gray’s film is beguiling and poetic, capable of gluing you to the screen for every second of its languorous 150-minute running time and lingering in the brain for weeks after.

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Adapted from David Grann’s 2009 work of non-fiction, The Lost City of Z follows Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), a British military man-turned-explorer who first ventured into the Amazon rainforest at the turn of the century. At first, Fawcett was dispatched as a surveyor, but eventually he became convinced there was evidence of a lost civilization hidden in the jungle, one as technologically advanced as any in the ancient world. Accompanied by a salty aide-de-camp, Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson), and, later, by his own son Jack (Tom Holland), Percy returned again and again to the Amazon in search of evidence he could bring home, flying in the face of then-held beliefs about the intellectual limits of “primitive” societies.

I haven’t gravitated toward Hunnam as an actor in the past, since he’s so often slotted into handsome leading-man roles entirely lacking in dimensionality (as in Pacific Rim ). But as Percy, he’s sensational. His character is driven and haunted, but not insane or unfulfilled, given his happy marriage to Nina (Sienna Miller) and his obvious love for his three children. Hunnam portrays Percy’s fixation on the Amazon as something that’s not easily dismissed: A mix of ego, a desire for fame, and genuine intellectual fascination keeps pulling him back into a life of danger and long separation from his family.

His repeated trips find him boating down the Amazon river on simple rafts with Costin and other local guides, navigating the complicated political landscapes of Bolivia and Brazil as the region is ravaged by rubber tycoons, warring colonial powers, and the creeping threat of industrialization. Gray makes it clear that Percy is a white invader in a land he doesn’t understand, while recognizing that his contentions—that Amazonian societies had farmed the earth, built complex structures, and created pottery and art—were seen as absurd and borderline offensive in Great Britain.

The notion that such advanced civilizations could have existed in South America was widely dismissed in the West, but Percy had an empathy for the region that was unusual. While others are seeking to strip the Amazon’s resources away, he wants only to witness its ancient artifacts. Industrial-scale expeditions bring guns into the jungle to do battle with local tribes, but Percy simply tries to reason with them, looking to find common ground so that they can help him search more deeply into the jungle.

Gray captures all of these dynamics with appropriate subtlety. He doesn’t dismiss the danger that Percy and his crew face around every river bend, or inadvertent harm they could do to the rainforest by attracting more Westerners with their discoveries. But he also emphasizes that Percy’s fascination with the region borders on the religious, as if discovery of these ancient wonders will finally answer some formless question gnawing at his soul. How else to comprehend the mind of the explorer who returns to the Amazon over and over again with little more than a pack full of food and a compass?

Just as incredible, and unusual, is the amount of time Gray spends with Nina, who’s far from the lifeless stereotype of a wife at home that Miller has played many times before (in films like American Sniper and Foxcatcher ). She’s a well-rounded partner to Percy, an idiosyncratic figure who strains against the sexism of her era while still supporting her husband in whatever way she can. Gray is committed to the emotional depth of every character, from the guide who leads Percy down the river to the self-important, prideful James Murray (Angus Macfadyen), a fellow explorer who accompanies him on a later trip, to the inscrutable but faithful Costin (easily Pattinson’s best screen performance to date).

At the same time, the director never loses sight of the natural wonders he’s trying to capture, or of the nebulous mysteries Percy is trying to fathom. Gray has long been a favorite of cineastes, but I’ve often found his work (such as 2007’s crime thriller We Own the Night or 2013’s period drama The Immigrant ) gorgeous but frustratingly remote, technically well executed but emotionally distant. The Lost City of Z bridges those gaps—it’s beautiful to look at, but what makes it unforgettable is its deep compassion for its characters and their inner lives. It’s the best film of the year thus far, and it’ll be a hard one to top.

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The Lost City of Z Isn’t the Epic You Might Expect, But It Takes You on a Ride

First, let’s be clear that most of the characters in The Lost City of Z are Brits, which means the Z is pronounced “Zed” rather than “Zee,” you Yankee ignoramus. Saying “Zed” is important, I think, because it points up the stark contrast between the film’s principal settings: early-20th-century England, which is musty and high-toned and reeking of pretension, and the Amazon jungle, which is verdant and buggy and reeking of decay, both vegetal and human. Early on, the English explorer Percy Fawcett ( Charlie Hunnam ) learns that deep in those perilous South American forests there might — might — be the remnants of a lost civilization, the existence of which endangers the unobliging noblesse of his colonialist superiors. (They sent him there to prevent a border war that would threaten the empires of sundry rubber barons.) Surely savages, his countrymen cry, couldn’t have had an advanced culture before the English! For Fawcett, proof of such a city would not only secure his fame and fortune. It would deal a blow to an aristocracy that cast him out after his father’s disgrace. He would advance on the basis of his mettle rather than his ancestry.

The Lost City of Z (ed) was first a book by David Grann, who framed Fawcett’s life as a mystery to be filled in with his own investigation. Director and screenwriter James Gray has opted to tell the story without a mediating modern journalist, inventing what he doesn’t know and changing the dramatic emphasis. Gray’s other films (among them We Own the Night and The Immigrant ) center on families or surrogate families whose loyalties are tested and affirmed. So rather than blindly obsessed adventurer, this Fawcett is a torn husband and father, guilty over his abandonment of his wife, Nina (Sienna Miller), and three children. His oldest, Jack (played as a young man by Tom Holland), is plainly bereft, which leads to a final act in which father and son cement their connection to each other and the universe. It’s a strange turn for a movie like this — both terrible and moving.

The Lost City of Z(ed) isn’t as expansive as you might initially wish but still pulls you in and along. Fawcett’s aide-de-camp, Henry Costin, is played by Robert Pattinson behind a full beard and spectacles, and he gives the river scenes a contemplative quality, somewhat like Mr. Spock. The air is filled with cacophonous birdcalls and sounds that can’t be identified or placed. Arrows fly out of the trees and kill members of the expedition, but the tribesmen — even the cannibalistic ones — seem less malevolent than ruled by instinct. A tribe might eat you or feed you — you never know. When a rich man (Angus Macfadyen) who boasts that he accompanied the polar explorer Shackleton bullies his way onto the second voyage, he succumbs most of all to the uncertainty. He wants to sue Fawcett for an apology. The movie has a more familiar piece of absurdism: a rubber baron (Franco Nero) who has built an opera house and dominates the indigenous people by force. The whip scars on the natives’ backs tell the story. You know the opera house will be gone in a relative instant, overwhelmed by the wilderness it crassly attempts to ennoble.

Gray has an unusual temperament for a film like this, humbled rather than stirred. Until the finale, he doesn’t charge the landscape with mysticism the way such would-be visionaries as Werner Herzog and Francis Ford Coppola do. He doesn’t seem to identify with Fawcett’s monomania — or perhaps Hunnam is more buttoned-up than Gray’s usual alter ego, the feverishly unstable Joaquin Phoenix. The film’s most dominant personality is, incredibly enough, Sienna Miller in the standard role of the stick-in-the-mud female who says “Think of your family” or, failing to domesticate her man, “Be careful.” Miller gives her pleas and remonstrations dramatic force — you believe her when she says she wants to accompany her husband. She’s also the only actor with whom Gray has intimacy. The camera doesn’t photograph her from the side and she has no beard or glasses.

It’s worth adding that we should treasure the visionary-but-reckless-explorer genre while it still exists, given that it’s too early in the life span of Earthlings for tales of real-life space exploration and too late for contemporary stories of going where no white person has gone before. The makers of Kong: Skull Island had to set their film in the early 1970s because the coming of satellites meant the end of the “uncharted” island. Besides, indigenous cultures are all but gone, as jungles are denuded and the poles shrink into puddles. We might soon be nostalgic for the days when we were mauled by tigers or eaten by cannibals.

*This article appears in the April 3, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.

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The Lost City Of Z Review

24 Mar 2017

141 minutes

Lost City of Z, The

Having spent much of his career channelling the grit and glower of ’70s crime cinema (see: Little Odessa, The Yards and We Own The Night ), it’s no surprise to find that James Gray’s latest movie just as faithfully echoes the same era — albeit in a very different way. In The Lost City Of Z he takes us far from the Scorsese-esque mean streets of the East Coast and drops us deep into the verdant, even meaner murk of a Herzogian wilderness.

Aguirre, The Wrath Of God is the obvious touchpoint, with its own doomed quest to find a jungle-swallowed city. As in Herzog’s unsettling 1972 epic, Gray’s shadowy jungle is an amoral, brutal and sometimes surreal force to be warily respected, rather than some bright, romantic pulp-fiction playground. The Amazon rainforest is a “green desert” where any passing non-indigenous human is little more than a walking buffet for mosquitoes, piranha, jaguars and cannibals. It is a powerful and visceral portrayal of a truly unmerciful landscape.

Somehow simultaneously unnerving and sublime.

Though Major Percy Fawcett is no wild-eyed Aguirre. Known to his contemporaries as “the David Livingstone of the Amazon”, and an inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World , he was one of the last great British explorers — a man who, until he himself became as lost as the city he sought, kept his composure and dignity amid the heat, starvation and occasional deluge of tribal arrows. In Gray’s script (adapted from The New Yorker writer David Grann’s superbly illuminating history) this fascinating character comes with the added baggage of social ostracism; “He’s been rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors,” one snooty superior notes. So success as an explorer is not merely a question of satisfying his intrepid nature; as Fawcett says to his boozy aide-de-camp Costin (Robert Pattinson, hidden beneath specs and a bushy beard), “My reputation as a man rests entirely on our success.”

In casting the role, Gray has taken something of a gamble. Charlie Hunnam’s broad-shouldered, laddish swagger seems an odd fit for the rake-thin, ramrod-straight gentleman explorer, who we follow through two decades of life. And while Hunnam largely holds up well under the pressure of his most demanding role yet, he is a less compelling presence during the quieter scenes with Fawcett’s ahead-of-her-time wife Nina (Sienna Miller, underused in yet another sidelined-spouse role) and, later, his grown-up son Jack (Tom Holland). He is a man for hacking at the tangled undergrowth or, in a dramatic mid-film diversion, scrambling across the barbed-wire and chlorine-gas plagued no-man’s land of the Somme.

Which isn’t to place the blame for the film’s lapses in momentum squarely at Hunnam’s door. Gray’s three-act/three-expedition structure necessitates in-between-adventure stretches which, while highlighting Fawcett’s listlessness and impatience to get back to finding Z, may also test your own patience a little and make the 141-minute running time feel significantly longer.

It’s a difficult story to end, too, its appeal to Grann being its status as one of modern history’s great unsolved mysteries. But here Gray excels, going out on an oblique but elegant note that is somehow simultaneously unnerving and sublime.

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Christopher nolan’s new remake has a perfect lead role for 1 actor he's not worked with since 2017, “more money than they offered me”: og ghostbusters star’s refusal to return addressed by ernie hudson, the lost city of z is a handsome and ambitious historical epic, if also one that's more intellectually engaging than emotionally compelling..

In the year 1905, Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) is a member of the British military who seeks to gain decorations and improve his own standing, as part of a larger effort to repair his legacy after his father ran the family name into the ground. Percy gets his chance to do just that when he is approached by the members of the Royal Geographic Society, including one Sir George Goldie (Ian McDiarmid), and offered a job - serving as the neutral third party who will map out the official border between Bolivia and Brazil - that is rather dangerous, but could prove very rewarding, should Percy succeed at it.

Accompanied by a group of fellow explorers that includes one Corporal Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson), Percy sets out to South America and winds up venturing deep into the heart of the Amazon jungles, rivers and rainforests that reside there. Over the course of their journey, the group happens upon the remnants of what Percy believes to be an ancient civilization (a city that he dubs "Z", pronounced "Zed") deep in the jungle - a hidden place that Percy thereafter becomes obsessed with returning to, in the hope of proving to the world that it does, beyond the shadow of a doubt, exist.

The new film both written and directed by James Gray ( Two Lovers , The Immigrant ), The Lost City of Z adapts David Grann's 2009 non-fiction bestseller of the same name, into an old-fashioned cinematic journey into the heart of the jungle (both literal and figurative, here). Gray's adaptation brings the early 20th century world and Percy Fawcett's story to life in a steadily-paced manner that borders on being abstract and dreamlike at times; to the degree that it comes off as the modern arthouse film version of an Indiana Jones -style throwback adventure, and all which that implies. The Lost City of Z is a handsome and ambitious historical epic, if also one that's more intellectually engaging than emotionally compelling.

While Grann's source material paints Percy Fawcett's tale in a certain light (as implied by its subtitle, A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon ), Gray's adaptation ultimately transforms the story into a parable about faith, spirituality and the human search for transcendence. Charlie Hunnam delivers one of his stronger performances to date as Mr. Fawcett in the film, selling the character's evolution from a younger man driven by simpler ambitions to a seasoned explorer whose obsession with finding the city of "Z" becomes more of a matter of belief than a quest for glory. Where The Lost of City struggles is to firmly connect the dots between the various stages of Percy's development as a character; at times, relying more on Hunnam's acting to sell Percy's convictions about the indigenous people and civilizations of Bolivia, without fully showing how he formed them.

The Lost City of Z similarly succeeds in streamlining the narrative of Grann's original book, covering a variety of subjects over its runtime - too many, at that. While Gray's movie starts out as a straightforward jungle adventure during its first act, it eventually spans around two decades' worth of time; touching upon everything from British classism to European racism, sexism and how global disillusionment in the wake of WWI fuels fan interest in Fawcett's expeditions. It's a lot of ground to cover and The Lost City of Z does a solid job on the whole, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) some of the issues it wrestles end up feeling like secondary thoughts that are forgotten, after a certain point in the film. As mentioned before, this makes The Lost City of Z more interesting as an intellectual exercise than a riveting cinematic experience, on the whole.

That being said, one area where The Lost City of Z unquestionably thrives is craftsmanship, in particular the cinematography by Darius Khondji (who also teamed up with Gray on The Immigrant and has become Woody Allen's frequent collaborator of late). The combination of Khondji and Gray's moody use of light and shadow, coupled with striking on-location compositions photographed in places such as Northern Ireland and Colombia, makes The Lost City of Z gorgeous to behold and worth seeing on the big screen for that reason alone. Much of the film's deliberate pacing comes from the editing style of John Axelrad (Gray's frequent collaborator), allowing The Lost City of Z to transition smoothly from scene to scene and further heightening the dream-esque temper of the film.

With Percy Fawcett's personal journey serving as the backbone of The Lost City of Z , the next best-developed character arc is given to Tom Holland as Percy's son, Jack; with Sienna Miller as Percy's wife, Nina, getting somewhat short-changed in the process. Nevertheless, both Holland and Miller further buoy their reputations as strong character actors with their work here, finding room to stand-out even as the spotlight remains fixed on Hunnam. The Lost City of Z 's larger supporting cast includes a number of distinguished screen veterans too (Ian McDiarmid and Franco Nero among them), though the most memorable side player in the film is easily Robert Pattinson (and his impressive beard) as Percy's loyal and capable, if somewhat offbeat, fellow explorer, Henry Costin.

If something like Kong: Skull Island puts a modern blockbuster spin on the old-school jungle adventure movie formula for general audiences, then The Lost City of Z does something similar for the non-mainstream/indie arthouse filmgoing crowd. Both are worth appreciating in their own ways, but where some moviegoers may find Skull Island to be mostly dumb and loud, others might find The Lost City of Z to be too slow and pretentious, based on their own storytelling preferences. With that in mind: for those who are interested in a mood-heavy jungle expedition, The Lost City of Z is one journey into the unknown that could prove more rewarding than not for them.

The Lost City of Z is now playing in U.S. theaters. It is 141 minutes long and is Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, brief strong language and some nudity.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

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The lost city of z, our rating:.

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The Lost City of Z Review

The Lost City of Z, with Charlie Hunnam and Tom Holland, is a wonderful throwback epic with modern insights about the danger in discovery.

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There is a feral beauty to the exotic locations the British Empire wandered into during the height of its 19th century supremacy. Supposedly bathed in untouched green, and as menacingly inviting as the serpentine Amazon River itself, the Great White explorer’s life was meant to be one of tranquil blue sheens that hid carnivorous fish beneath its gloss—and perhaps a “lost” civilization or two in its jungled depths.

Such gross simplifications of faraway lands, which feature heavily in certain characters’ psychology during The Lost City of Z , is the stuff adventure yarns and imperial conquest are built on. This lifestyle has also been thoroughly explored in a number of iconic stories, from literature to cinema, and from Kipling to Herzog. Yet, one of the great strengths of James Gray’s The Lost City of Z film adaptation is that he cuts through that romance and uses it as a mirror for Western culture and the men who spread it. This is not simply a post-colonial condemnation of the past, but a triumphant and shrewdly intelligent modernization of the classic epics of yore. It also is the best narrative film to play at this year’s New York Film Festival.

As a movie, Z pinpoints the exact generational shift whereupon Victorian superiority descended into post-war waywardness. The exploits of this culture, which are often imagined as an escape into the purity of nature, instead become an extension of the very souls and obsessions that wished to vanish there in the first place.

The main spirit of the piece is Percy Fawcett, played here with a deliberately antiquated affectation by a superb Charlie Hunnam. Fawcett is the last guard of old Victoria’s classic English gentry. Alas then that when the film opens, it’s already 1905, with the queen long dead and Fawcett appearing as a man out of time. Despite wishing to rise in English society, he unfortunately suffers, as one of his aristocratic superiors notes, from “a poor choice in ancestors.” Presumably driven to excel to even greater heights due to his father’s own shortcomings, Percy has served with ambition in both North Africa and Asia, but by the time the film begins with him in Ireland, it is clear he’ll never be allowed into the military’s “inner circle.”

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At least that is until he is given an offer by the Royal Geographical Society to survey Bolivia, which remains one of the last frontiers of mysterious jungles and dangerous “savages.” It also allows him a chance to cool local tensions and potentially prevent another war for the homeland. So despite his beloved wife Nina (Sienna Miller) being pregnant with their second son, Fawcett departs and finds himself on the road to fame and success. For beyond tracing the source of the Rio Verde River, he also survives attacks from local natives and run-ins with piranhas. He even finds pottery and carvings in the deepest jungles, suggesting that, just maybe, a fabled lost city of gold really did exist beyond the reach of white men.

Fawcett is most remembered in history for his final trek to the Amazon in 1925 with his adult son Jack (Tom Holland), and how his adventures inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write The Lost World . But the film’s strength is much more on how each venture to South America—and the Great War that interrupted those journeys—affected Fawcett’s constantly thwarted ambition, his relationship with Nina who he considered his equal (but “only of the mind”), and how the world he knew was just as lost as any ancient city by the end of World War I. Still, the pull of Fawcett’s mysterious “Z” city (“El Dorado” had too many negative connotations by the 20th century) remained inescapable.

Obviously, any film that deals with vanishing into South American jungles will be instantly compared to the Herzog classic where vainglorious conquistadors got lost in the woods. However, Gray’s film owes less to that than the sprawling and gingerly paced epics of about 50 or 60 years ago. Rather than tell just of one (or several) disappearances into the Amazon’s heat, The Lost City of Z is more of a traditional panorama that evokes life from a bygone age with sprawling storytelling. And the modernization of the material is that rather than becoming engrossed in Percy’s fascination—as how a David Lean protagonist might “go native”—Percy is ostensibly a product of turn-of-the-century English yearning and etiquette, with much of the film’s strongest elements being of that intimate portraiture at home.

Beautifully lensed by Darius Khondji in on 35mm celluloid, Fawcett’s England is one of smoke-adorned mahogany in dark corners and picturesque afternoons in the meadow. However, the sun is already setting on this world, even before the film travels to the grim WWI battlefields. Within this transition, the need for English explorers and adventurers already appears to be dying with every passing day, leading to a sophisticated, if mostly implied, relationship between the central husband and wife.

Sienna Miller, who is starting to make a career out of playing the dutiful and long suffering bride, gets her best role in that mold yet since Nina is very much an active part of the story, enjoying a life beyond asking for her husband to come home. In fact, they are both suffragists who behoove the rigidness of the culture they inhabit. Nevertheless, the film implies an implicit waffling from Percy, who speaks of modernization but finds himself lost in ever the ancient daydreams of golden cities, and classical British fantasies like climbing the nigh insurmountable class system. He likewise speaks about wishing to free the “Indians” of South America from slavery, but still seems to use them as merely a rationalization for his own passion of returning again and again to the jungle.

The Lost City of Z, better than any recent period piece in memory, encapsulates that dying gasp of an empire by studying a man who wishes to both transform his surroundings but hew to his contemporaries’ greatest laurels.

Of course, the jungle itself is a harrowing place in the film, and Hunnam and Percy’s frequent traveling companion, Henry Costin (an unrecognizably bearded Robert Pattinson), spend much of their scenes together surviving the river with rotating sidekicks, be it worldly redshirts earmarked as fish chow or an especially naïve middle-aged fool played by Angus Macfadyen. Hunnam and Pattinson are uniformly excellent at presenting, respectively, an elegant sense of English propriety and bemused hypocrisy while in the wild. Marvel’s newest webbed star, Tom Holland, also eventually gets in on the action in third act while sporting a fairly unconvincing moustache.

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Yet, the one area where the film stumbles a bit is surprisingly in the lush jungled vistas. While The Lost City of Z very clearly traveled to South American wilds and captured the grit of the landscape, the picture’s focus on the sense of English transference never allows itself to be fully immersed in that sense of remote euphoria and discovery that Fawcett obviously felt. Perhaps a conscious choice taken in order to give a broader view of this type of worldview that would drive a man to return again and again to places where he’d have to contend with cannibalistic tribes and poisonous snakes, the movie never quite gets the dirt under its own fingernails or fully shares that madness for finding hidden archaeological treasures. Similarly, audiences looking for more straightforward escapism might be surprised at how much more expansive the scope really is beyond the Amazon.

Still, The Lost City of Z is a tremendous achievement for Gray, his cast, and an elusive ambition that is hardly exclusive for the film’s protagonist. This picture is a trip into the past, both in terms of setting and in its determination to revisit a kind of grandiose storytelling that used to be the province of studios who now would never touch the stuff unless there could be some superpowers thrown in. Z is an unabashed throwback that revisits a lost form with a modern sensibility—discovering its great prize for the more adventurous of moviegoers.

4.5 out of 5

David Crow | @DCrowsNest

David Crow is the movies editor at Den of Geek. He has long been proud of his geek credentials. Raised on cinema classics that ranged from…

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The lost city of z, common sense media reviewers.

Dense, intelligent, mature, yet measured adventure drama.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Characters go up against impossible odds to find s

The main character is brave, resilient, and persis

Arrows pierce a man's chest. Bloody wounds. Bl

Topless native women. Brief, mild innuendo.

A use of "goddamn," and a use of "b

Drinking from flasks. Smoking. A character's (

Positive Messages

Characters go up against impossible odds to find something that may or may not exist. Raises questions around the idea of when to quit/not to quit when pursuing something that may never be accomplished.

Positive Role Models

The main character is brave, resilient, and persistent; he perseveres, unwilling to give up in his quest. But he sacrifices many things along the way, including watching his family grow up and grow old and missing out on helping to raise his children.

Violence & Scariness

Arrows pierce a man's chest. Bloody wounds. Blood in water. Guns and shooting. Fighting. Hunting sequences, animals shot. Men falling from horses. Scars. Man vomits.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

A use of "goddamn," and a use of "bastard."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Drinking from flasks. Smoking. A character's (unseen) father is said to have been a drinker and a gambler, having disgraced the family name.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Lost City of Z is a a fact-based historical adventure/drama about the search for a lost Amazonian city. Originally rated R but edited to get a PG-13, the movie has sporadic but strong violence, including guns and shooting, bloody wounds, hunting sequences (with animals killed), arrows piercing a man's chest, fighting, and other iffy images. Topless women native to the Amazon are shown, and there's brief mild innuendo. Language includes "goddamn" and "bastard." Characters occasionally drink from flasks and smoke, and one character's father is described as a drinker and a gambler who ruined the family name. Even though it might come across as an exciting jungle adventure, the movie is slow, dense, and mature, and it's unlikely to excite many teens. Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson co-star; the movie is based on the book by David Grann. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 3 parent reviews

THIS SHOULD BE RATED R

Beware - this is a bit grim, what's the story.

In THE LOST CITY OF Z, which is based on a true story (covered in the non-fiction book by David Grann), Percy Fawcett ( Charlie Hunnam ) is military man who becomes interested in finding an ancient lost city hidden in the Amazon. Accompanied by Corporal Henry Costin ( Robert Pattinson ), Fawcett finds his first trip dangerous -- they face starvation, deadly natives, and vicious wildlife -- but it reveals significant clues. The second trip is hindered by the presence of James Murray ( Angus Macfadyen ), who's unequipped to handle the rigors of the jungle, uses up extra provisions, and endangers the mission. The third trip Fawcett makes with his son ( Tom Holland ), and the outcome is a mystery.

Is It Any Good?

James Gray makes intelligent, good-looking, grown-up movies that are admirable but somehow rather reserved; this real-life adventure tale is a more sprawling work, but the result is similar. Gray ( We Own the Night , Two Lovers , The Immigrant ) is steeped in the cinema of the 1970s, and The Lost City of Z feels more like Werner Herzog 's Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) than it does Raiders of the Lost Ark . Yet it lacks Aguirre 's madness; it's missing the kind of enthusiasm or obsession that might help drive a movie like this.

But there's no denying that it's expertly made. The Amazon footage is harrowing and realistic; you can feel the bugs buzzing around, as well as the supreme heat, humidity, and exhaustion. The images have a high-class, measured realism and complexity of character; no one here is merely a hero or a villain, not even Macfadyen's Murray, whose scenes are the film's most primal and emotional ones (you really want him to suffer for his crimes). This movie requires a little bit of thinking and involvement, but it's worth the effort.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Lost City of Z 's violence . How much is shown vs. not shown? Which has more impact? Why? Does exposure to violent media make kids more aggressive?

How does the movie handle drinking and smoking ? Are there consequences for substance use? Why is that important?

How familiar were you with Percy Fawcett? What do you think really happened? Does the movie make you want to look into the story further?

What seems more important: a search for a lost city or spending time with your family? How does the movie answer this question?

The movie is deliberately more thoughtful and less exciting than an Indiana Jones-type adventure. Did you like it more or less?

Movie Details

In theaters : April 14, 2017
On DVD or streaming : July 11, 2017
Cast : Charlie Hunnam , Robert Pattinson , Sienna Miller
Director : James Gray
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studios : Bleecker Street , Amazon Studios
Genre : Drama
Topics : Adventures , History
Character Strengths : Perseverance
Run time : 141 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : violence, disturbing images, brief strong language and some nudity
Last updated : March 6, 2024

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The Lost City of Z review: Charlie Hunnam slow-burns down the Amazon, leaving Sienna Miller at home

James Gray’s introspective tale of adventurer Percival Fawcett’s obsession with a lost Amazonian city is a twist on the familiar Conrad jungle narrative

J ames Gray brings a characteristically muted, slow-burn intensity of purpose to this odd, interesting period drama. It is based on the true story of Col Percival Fawcett, a British explorer and army officer of the last century who became obsessed with what he was convinced was a lost city he called “Z”, deep in the Amazon jungle: a vanished civilisation overlooked by the historical and archaeological establishment. For his screenplay, Gray has adapted the 2005 New Yorker article and subsequent book about Fawcett by David Grann . It’s a curious film in some ways, taking what could be an exciting epic adventure in the style of David Lean and turning it into something introspective, slightly morose and anti-climactic. Yet there is a persistent, beady-eyed intelligence at work.

Gray’s film shows that Fawcett’s involvement in Amazon exploration has its origin in his being asked by the Royal Geographical Society to act as an honest broker in a border dispute between South American states about where national territories began and ended, which in turn arose from exploitation of local resources. But while there, Fawcett rises above commercial concerns and even the traditional thrill of imperial prestige. He finds fragments of pots and evidence of ruined sculpture, which triggers a lifetime’s obsession and a need to prove himself to the snobs and prigs who had looked down on him for being not quite top drawer. His Amazon journeys happen as storm clouds of war are gathering; the trips are in some ways driven by the same misplaced romantic need to prove masculinity and hardihood – but also a need to avoid and escape, to turn one’s back on the squalor of conflict.

Charlie Hunnam plays Fawcett himself and Sienna Miller gives a good performance as his wife, Nina; Tom Holland is Hunnam’s son Tom, who was to accompany him on his last fateful trip into the jungle, and Robert Pattinson is Henry Costin, his bearded and dishevelled assistant.

It is an unusual film in that it appears to invoke the familiar ideas of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God , but does something different with them. It is more episodic. This is not about a single, epic, crazily hubristic journey into the jungle, in which the increasingly panicky participants have a catastrophic encounter with barbarism that in turns discloses the savage greed within the western adventurer’s own soul. There are some familiar images: a terrifying upriver journey, deadly arrows from tribesmen hidden in the foliage, bleached skulls, signs of cannibalism, loss of nerve and erosion of discipline within the explorers’ ranks – and a surreal encounter with an opera. But Gray shows something that is anti-Conrad and anti-Herzog: that explorers can return home safely, become feted for their exploits, have unwelcome encounters with duplicitous colleagues – but resolve to go back out there.

It happens time and again, and Fawcett’s need to return is not even extinguished by the first world war, which is evoked with brutal confidence. His troubled relationship with his son brought to my mind Kipling’s anguished memories of his son, lost in the war and memorialised in his poem My Boy Jack .

Where another sort of film might periodically crank up the tempo and amplify the drama and passion, Gray sternly keeps things lower and slower, with a concerted evenness, as if wanting us to remain detached from Fawcett’s passions. It makes for a slightly opaque movie in some ways, yet one that remains coolly and cerebrally engaged.

Berlin film festival 2017
Berlin film festival
Robert Pattinson
Sienna Miller
Action and adventure films
Film adaptations

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‘The Lost City of Z’ Movie Review

The Lost City of Z stars Robert Pattinson and Charlie Hunnam

“I wish to find a lost city,” says Percy Fawcett ( Charlie Hunnam ). “What you seek is far greater than you ever imagined. Your soul will never be quiet until you find this place,” replies a fortune teller as Fawcett gets ready to lead his men into battle during the first World War in the dramatic film, The Lost City of Z .

At the dawn of the 20th century, Colonel Percy Fawcett is chosen by the Royal Geographical Society to explore the uncharted jungles of the Amazon. He’s tasked with creating maps to be used by the British government, maps that will, hopefully, lead to the country’s financial gain. Fawcett’s initially disappointed having wished for a more exciting adventure, but he eventually accepts the position while remaining hopeful he’ll be able to make a name for himself and rise higher on the social ladder.

Percy is joined on this mission by Henry Costin ( Robert Pattinson ), an aide-de-camp he meets up with on his journey to the Amazon. Percy admits to Henry they’ll need to depend and rely on each other if they hope to make it out of the inhospitable wilderness alive.

Once in the jungle, Percy and Henry are forced to deal with a variety of dangers. Percy, Henry, and their small team must constantly be on alert as they travel, with poisonous insects, unbearable heat, and indigenous cannibalistic tribes launching spears at their passing boats keeping the group on high alert. During their trip down the river, one of the natives Fawcett is using as a guide tells him of a long lost city which Fawcett disregards as a fairy tale. That is until near the end of his trip down the river when Fawcett finds pottery lying in the jungle where it has no business being. Fawcett is convinced his guide was telling the truth and that there is in fact a lost city that’s been swallowed up by the jungle. Percy nicknames this mysterious city “Zed” and becomes obsessed with finding the ancient city.

Based on an inspirational true story, The Lost City of Z from writer/director James Gray is beautifully shot and well-acted, although it does suffer from an occasionally frustratingly slow pace. It’s reminiscent in style and substance to such films as Apocalypse Now and Lord Jim , comparing favorably to both.

Charlie Hunnam (best known as ‘Jax Teller’ in Sons of Anarchy ) delivers a solid performance as the British explorer Percy Fawcett who, in hopes of making a name for himself and improving his social stature, gets lost in his obsession to find the mythical Lost City of Z. Percy returns home and is hailed as a hero, and Hunnam subtly displays how Fawcett still longs to return to the jungle despite his newfound popularity and the fact his wife and children missed him terribly. Also impressive is how Hunnam effectively shows how Fawcett worked to communicate and befriend the natives of the Amazon in the hopes of learning something about the path to Zed. Percy’s very much a peacemaker and bridge to the British explorers and the natives, and Hunnam does a terrific job displaying Fawcett’s ability to feel at peace among the native tribes.

Robert Pattinson delivers the best performance of his career and is almost unrecognizable under a long shaggy beard as Henry, Percy’s loyal assistant and eventual good friend. Henry truly had Percy’s back during the most deadly and dangerous times on their journeys into the jungle, saving his life more than once and even getting himself transferred to serve with Fawcett in World War I on the front lines. Pattinson’s performance is subdued and reserved, but extremely effective.

In a supporting role, Sienna Miller delivers another strong performance as Fawcett’s devoted, smart, and often abandoned wife, Nina, who’s left to raise their three children and support the family mostly on her own while her husband is off exploring jungles. Miller and Hunnam have good chemistry, and Miller has a very powerful scene at the end of the film where she shows just how much Nina loved and believed in her husband.

The Lost City of Z is visually breathtaking with outstanding cinematography by Darius Khondji bringing the jungle of the Amazon to life in all its wonder, beauty, and dangers. Gray’s pacing and storytelling on the first two adventures into the jungle are almost flawless, capturing the hard, slow-moving and dangerous journey Fawcett and Costin made deep into the uncharted territory. It’s when the film moves to the First World War and then finally years later to Fawcett’s finallast journey back into the Amazon that the film starts to drag and feels drawn out.

Despite the minor problem with pacing in the third act, the top-notch performances, stunning cinematography, and a worthy, engaging true story finally being told about Fawcett’s adventures in the Amazon make The Lost City of Z a film that should be seen up on the big screen to truly appreciate the craftsmanship put into its making.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, brief strong language and some nudity

Running Time: 141 minutes

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DVD & Streaming

The Lost City of Z

Drama , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

April 14, 2017
Charlie Hunnam as Percy Fawcett; Robert Pattinson as Henry Costin; Sienna Miller as Nina Fawcett; Tom Holland as Jack Fawcett; Ian McDiarmid as Sir George Goldie

Home Release Date

July 11, 2017

Distributor

Bleecker Street Media

Movie Review

Major Percy Fawcett is a good man and a good soldier.

Unfortunately, for all his worthiness, he’s had a difficult time gaining promotion in the either the army or in society. And that, he has no doubt, can be linked back to his father—a man who was known to be, shall we say, lax in his morals.

However, that doesn’t mean all the cards are stacked against this upright man. After being called back to London, Major Fawcett is offered a special task by the Royal Geographical Society. It’s a job that the Society’s curator suggests might well earn him decoration and the opportunity to reclaim his sullied family name.

He’s to head an expedition to South America where he will accurately map out the vague border between Bolivia and Brazil—hopefully curtailing war there and aiding the British rubber trade all in one fell swoop.

Of course, it’s not an easy job. He’ll be away from his wife, Nina, and their son for no fewer than three years. And even after teaming up with a more seasoned explorer, Henry Costin, Fawcett quickly realizes that the heretofore untried task is nearly impossible.

The heat is overwhelming. The jungle unnavigable. The insects swarm constantly, wounds don’t heal, supplies rot. And then there are the natives who might pop out of the dense woodland and lob arrows and spears in their direction at any given moment.

Fawcett, however, is determined to press on. No matter the cost to himself or his company of men, he will fulfill his task and restore his name. He will map out a land that no white man has ever seen before.

Along that difficult journey, something simple changes the rest of his life. A native—someone who’d been captured and made a slave by a local rubber baron—becomes a part of Fawcett’s party and casually mentions an ancient city. A city of maize and gold supposedly hidden deep within the jungle, somewhere just past the source of the river they’re presently mapping.

Sure enough, when they reach the river’s source, they find ancient pottery shards and elaborate carvings unseen by any civilized eye. And though he must now turn back to London, Major Percy Fawcett is consumed with a new purpose, a new potential for glory.

He will, he must return to the jungles of Amazonia and find an advanced and hidden city he has dubbed … “Z.”

Positive Elements

What begins simply as a way to claim some modicum of redemption for Fawcett turns into a passion to solve an important anthropological puzzle that could benefit all mankind. In fact, Fawcett believes that the lost city of Z is the “ultimate piece of the human puzzle.” And, obviously, something worth dedicating his life to.

His fuctional abandonment of his family certainly isn’t admirable. But his wife and oldest son, Jack, both ultimately come to believe that the explorer’s work is worth the time they lost together. In fact, an older Jack compells his father to join him and return to South America one last time in search of the still-unfound city.

Spiritual Elements

Fawcett believes the so-called “savages” of the Amazon may be connected to a culture that is older and potentially more sophisticated than Europeon society. When the English gentry doubt his claims, Fawcett states that they’ve been blinded by the “bigotry of the church.”

During World War I, a spiritualist with a Ouija board takes Fawcett’s hand and “reads” his fortune, stating that his soul will only find peace when he finds the lost city he seeks. After being captured by natives, Fawcett tells his son, “Nothing will happen to us that isn’t our destiny.”

Sexual Content

Though never seen through a sexual lens, the indigenous natives of the South American jungles walk about nearly naked but for a small loin cloth. Several topless women are glimpsed among their number.

Violent Content

World War I trench-fighting scenes include massive mortar explosions and men struck by machine gun fire. One soldier gets hit in the face with a bullet, and several others fall gasping and gagging after being doused with chlorine gas. Fawcett loses his eyesight after being exposed to gas. Corpses are stacked in a trench. In other gun-related scenes, Fawcett kills a large stag and a jungle boar. We see the dead animals with bloody wounds.

In the heat and moisture of the dense jungle, the explorers sport never-healing open wounds and are inflicted with blood poisoning, fever and another disease that causes them to vomit blood. They’re also exposed to various attacks from vicious natives. Some men are killed with arrows and spears. Two tribes of natives throw spears at each other, several of their number being impaled by the projectiles.

Fawcett makes peaceful contact with an indigenous tribe, only to find that they are cannibals. We see a human corpse roasting over a fire and shrunken human heads hanging from posts. Fawcett and Costin paint their faces with human blood.

A man who falls into a river is attacked by a school of piranha fish. While staging something of a mutiny, another character has part of his ear shot off. Fawcett slaps his teen son’s face when the young man yells at him. Two men on horseback become entangled, sending the men and their mounts crashing to the ground. Someone is knocked off his horse when he hits a low-hanging tree branch.

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word and one or two uses each of “b–tard” and “d–n.” Christ’s and God’s name are both misused once (“God” being combined with “d–n”). The British crudity “bloody” is used once.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Fawcett and several others occasionally swig from a small flask. We hear that Fawcett’s father had a problem with “gaming and drinking.” Costin smokes cigarettes regularly, and we see several other men smoking before charging out on a battlefield. Fawcett and his older son are both given some kind of hallucinatory drug by native tribesmen.

Other Negative Elements

Some members of the British nobility browbeat Fawcett because of his family name. One of them states, “He’s been rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors.” Fawcett regularly leaves his own family behind, venturing to South America for several years per trip. In fact, after returning from his first expedition in the Amazon, his son wonders, “Are you my father?”

You may never have heard of the British explorer Percy Fawcett, but he is said to have influenced a number of adventure-minded authors over the years. He’s even been linked to certain cinematic hero by the name of Indiana Jones.

That said, don’t expect any Jonesian run-in-front-of-a-boulder derring-do, here. In fact, let me say straight up, if your idea of a great adventure film movie night is a bucket of popcorn and the latest Fast and Furious pic (or, well, anything with Jason Stratham in it) then The Lost City of Z is likely not the night at the movies you’re looking for.

Director James Gray’s take on this British explorer’s life definitely has a different cadence than the majority of today’s adventure fare. Like its historical subject, this film is quiet, intense, thoughtful and measured: a classic filmmaking approach in the style of, say, Doctor Zhivago or Lawrence of Arabia .

The truth is, Percy Fawcett’s story feels altogether foreign to our modern movie-going mindset. His escapades were indeed peppered with danger, in the form of lethal jungle creatures and bloody battlefield encounters. But they rarely ended in anything like victory. Fawcett’s life was spent in perpetual disappointment, crippling frustration and seemingly pointless sacrifice. His choice to leave a beautiful wife and loving family and make multiple-year journeys into the miserable sweltering jungle can seem almost nonsensical to today’s average Joe.

So what we have here is a meticulously crafted and slow-moving film that captures the life of a man consumed by the heady beauty and aching magnetism of the unknown. It’s less a movie about a man making great historical strides than it is about a man’s obsessive need to put himself to the test, to reach beyond his own grasp. It’s a tale of compulsive wanderlust that is best consumed with an unhurried understanding.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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The Lost City Of Z

5 out of 5 stars
Recommended

Time Out says

A British explorer sets out into the trackless Amazon in this gripping, spectacular adventure story

The British explorer Percy Fawcett – driven crazy by his obsession to find a lost Amazonian city – vanished in the jungle in 1925. His story has everything you could possibly want in an adventure tale: treacherous colleagues, cannibals with bubbling pots, spears flying out of nowhere, shrunken heads, piranhas, even an opera troupe singing Mozart in the wild. But in the hands of ‘The Immigrant’ director James Gray (adapting David Grann’s thrilling 2009 book), it has something that most modern filmmakers would skim over in favour of action: a soulful sense of unresolved wanderlust, and an exquisitely developed tension between family responsibilities and the call of greatness over the horizon.

Shot by mighty cinematographer Darius Khondji (‘Seven’), ‘The Lost City of Z’ feels like it comes out of that epic 1970s moment when filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola and Werner Herzog dived into the mud on their own personal tests of will. Gray works at a relaxed pace; this isn’t ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’. Instead, he places the forward momentum wholly on leading actor Charlie Hunnam (producer Brad Pitt originally intended to star himself).

His occasional coarseness is a perfect match for Fawcett’s early frustrations as a colonel officer from a modest background – or, as one snob puts it, has been ‘rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors’. A Bolivian mapmaking job presents an opportunity for advancement and, with his bushy bearded aide Henry (Robert Pattinson), Fawcett leaves behind his encouraging wife, Nina (Sienna Miller), and young son.

The first expedition is thrilling, with its murmurs of discovery. But the film locks us in during Fawcett’s second quest, when his own natural humility among the tribespeople – a progressive attitude for the day – is tested by old duffers at the Royal Geographical Society, as well as a fatuous fellow traveller, the Antarctic explorer James Murray (Angus Macfayden, supplying humour exactly when it’s needed). At home, independent Nina dreams of adventure, and is disappointed by her husband’s sexist refusal to let her accompany him.

‘The Lost City of Z’ is so ambitious during its middle section, complete with tense showdowns in musty London drawing rooms and along grungy South American riverbanks, that you’ll almost explode with joy to realise that Gray has one more turn up his sleeve (too good to ruin here). World War I and deployment on the French front lines waylays Fawcett for a decade, but there he is, crying in his hospital bed at the glories he has yet to explore.

The grandeur of this movie is off the charts. For a certain kind of old-school movie fan, someone who believes in shapely, classical proportions and an epic yarn told over time, it will be the revelation of the year.

Release Details

Release date: Friday 24 March 2017
Duration: 141 mins

Cast and crew

Director: James Gray
Screenwriter: James Gray
Charlie Hunnam
Sienna Miller
Robert Pattinson
Angus MacFadyen

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Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson Are Great As They Look For ‘The Lost City Of Z’

There are times during James Gray’s The Lost City of Z – the closing night film at this year’s New York Film Festival that tells the true story of English explorer Percy Fawcett (played by Charlie Hunnam) – that reminded me of an Indiana Jones movie. Before you scoff, I just want to specify that I mean specifically the scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark of Indiana Jones teaching, leading explorations, and engaging foreign cultures in native languages with compassion and intrigue. (You know, all the kind of things that might be deemed “boring” by today’s action-craved blockbuster audiences.)

Taking place over the course of 20 some years, we follow Fawcett has he travels to the Amazon for three different trips (and a tour of duty fighting in France during World War I) – his obsession growing each time in an effort to find an advanced civilization deep within the jungle. Frustrated with his military service (Fawcett openly laments he has no medals), he volunteers for an expedition to Bolivia (financed by an organization run by a man played by Ian McDiarmid – a great reminder of one of the few bright spots of the Star Wars prequels).

There are also hints of The Mosquito Coast to be found in The Lost City of Z , the questions of what happens when the outside world invades established, unexplored cultures. The big difference here is Percy Fawcett isn’t a crazy person like Harrison Ford’s Allie Fox – and Fawcett certainly isn’t under the impression that anyone in the Amazon needs to be saved by white explorers. It’s the opposite.

On Fawcett’s first expedition, an exploration of a river for mapmaking purposes, he discovers advanced pottery. When he returns to England, his claims of a possible advanced civilization are dismissed. To them, the locals in South America are just “savages,” but Fawcett wants to prove his world wrong. It’s here that Gray does something interesting with his film: He doesn’t scrutinize Fawcett’s intentions beyond the fact that he’s a lousy husband and father (leaving his wife, played by Sienna Miller, for years at a time, multiple times) and presents his mission as sincere, even though it’s an obsession. And Charlie Hunnam is outstanding as Fawcett and legitimately commands the screen. (The best decision Hunnam made was getting out of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise. After a stilted performance in the stilted Pacific Rim , the last thing Hunnam needed was to enter into something like Fifty Shades of Grey . Sure, he probably could have lived the rest of his life off of the residuals, but career-wise, that may have been it. And in The Lost City of Z he really proves what he’s capable of doing.) But this isn’t a condemnation on Fawcett or the people he’s meeting in his explorations. It’s an interesting approach because it would be so easy to pick a side.

Fawcett’s right-hand man for his first two expeditions (for the last one, he brings his now-teenage son, played by Tom Holland) is Henry Costin, played by a heavily bearded Robert Pattinson. This is my favorite Pattinson performance because I kept forgetting it was Robert Pattinson. In his first few post- Twilight performances there was a sense that he was trying to prove himself as an actor. And that’s understandable. But here, he’s fades away into his character so well that I kept having to remind myself that it was him. That’s a good thing. (Bearded Robert Pattinson’s appearance has more in common with early ‘70s John Lennon than he does the guy who was in Twilight . This is a good look for him.)

The Lost City of Z unfortunately won’t be in theaters until April, but I hope it gets a strong push. I hope people see it. It’s a well-crafted film (by a director who has been working to get this movie made for seven years) starring two actors who may just change some perceptions about the both of them.

Mike Ryan lives in New York City and has written for The Huffington Post, Wired, Vanity Fair and New York magazine. He is senior entertainment writer at Uproxx. You can contact him directly on Twitter.

Entertainment
The True Story Behind <i>The Lost City of Z</i>

The True Story Behind The Lost City of Z

Warning: spoilers for The Lost City of Z follow.

Since he disappeared in the Brazilian jungle in 1925, the British explorer Percy Fawcett has inspired plays, comic books, Hollywood movies and even an Indiana Jones novel. Eighty years later, Fawcett’s search for a lost ancient city which he dubbed “Z” inspired the journalist David Grann to follow in his footsteps. Grann recounted the story of Fawcett’s life, in parallel with his own journey to learn about it, first in the New Yorker and then in a book, The Lost City of Z , which is now the basis of a movie of the same name, hitting theaters April 14.

The film, which stars Charlie Hunnam as Fawcett, Sienna Miller as his wife Nina, Tom Holland (a.k.a. Spider-Man ) as their eldest son Jack and Robert Pattinson as fellow explorer Henry Costin, hews close to Grann’s book. While it consolidates many of his experiences, it paints a portrait of a man teetering on the brink of obsession, with director James Gray offering his own interpretation of the explorer’s ambiguous fate.

Here’s how the movie’s version compares to the way Fawcett’s life and fateful journey really unfolded.

Fact: Fawcett was at a social disadvantage because his father had damaged the family name.

The movie Fawcett’s preoccupation with social advancement draws from the real Fawcett’s impaired standing. His father, Captain Edward Boyd Fawcett, began his life a Victorian aristocrat but squandered away the family’s wealth as he struggled with alcoholism. The family scrounged up enough to send the younger Fawcett to elite schools and the Royal Military Academy. But later in his life, any desire for status would be eclipsed by Fawcett’s fixation on finding Z, which would leave his own family destitute.

MORE Review: James Gray’s Resplendent Lost City of Z Speaks to the Explorer in All of Us

Mostly fact: The Royal Geographical Society summoned Fawcett out of the blue for a mission to Bolivia in 1906.

Though the RGS did tap Fawcett for a South American voyage, it didn’t happen as unexpectedly as the film suggests. Fawcett first visited the institution in 1900 and spent a year training there before his first mission. Whereas the movie presents Fawcett as somewhat reluctant to become an explorer — he says he hoped to rectify his undecorated uniform with some military action — the real Fawcett had been eager to work as an explorer since he was stationed in the British colony of Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka. In pursuit of rumored treasure there, he had found the ruins of an ancient temple and knew then that he wanted to forge a path like those of Richard Francis Burton and David Livingstone.

Fact: Fawcett returned to the Amazon many times between his first and last expedition.

As the movie depicts, Fawcett’s first expedition to the Amazon was a mapmaking mission. With the auto industry gaining steam, demand for rubber boomed, and border disputes between Bolivia, Brazil and Peru threatened to erupt in a violent conflagration. The countries summoned England as an independent arbiter. During this and future trips, rumors of a lost civilization, which Fawcett heard first from Indians and later read about in conquistadors’ accounts, struck him as increasingly possible.

Much like in the movie, during one trip in 1910, Fawcett’s group was traveling by boat when they were suddenly inundated with a barrage of poisonous spears. After taking cover, they began to sing “Soldiers of the Queen” as Fawcett waved a handkerchief and walked toward the shore to indicate friendship. The tribe, the Guarayos, invited the men to stay as guests. While there, Fawcett witnessed their advanced fishing methods. Later, when he met the Echoja tribe, he was impressed by their herbal medicines and their cultivation of floodplains to grow crops in the middle of the jungle. These observations felt like mounting proof that a remarkable ancient city might once have flourished.

Fact: Nina Fawcett was an independent woman who always hoped her husband would allow her to join him on his expeditions.

Well-educated, insatiably curious and a speaker of multiple languages, Nina supported her husband’s missions from afar not only by raising their three children but by defending his reputation from his many detractors. But she also longed to join him. An advocate for gender equality, she argued that she was in good health and knew how to navigate by the stars. Although she did visit her husband in South America once, he always refused her requests to join in his dangerous expeditions.

Partly fiction: Fawcett fought against paternalistic and racist views of Indians.

The movie’s Fawcett rails against his colleagues’ attitudes toward Indians, which he perceived as alternately paternalistic and racist. He even does so to a jeering crowd of RGS members, in a scene that appears to be fabricated. In reality, Fawcett’s views were more complicated. He did advocate nonviolence toward Indians and disapproved of intervention with their way of life. He learned their languages and argued that the inhabitants of his “lost city” would have been capable of scientific feats on par with those of Europeans at the time. But he also referred to them as “ape-like,” “jolly children,” and he believed any advanced civilization in the Amazon must have had origins in European society.

Fact: Fawcett was consumed by the fear that a rival might beat him to Z.

In the movie, Fawcett tells his son Jack that he fears Americans will get to Z first, killing Indians along the way. In fact, this fear originated long before that conversation and stemmed from a combination of his concern for the Indians’ safety and his own mighty ego. His main rival was the American doctor and explorer Alexander Hamilton Rice, who had something Fawcett lacked: money. When Rice mounted an expedition in 1924, as Fawcett struggled to fund what would be his last, it was with the latest gadgets, equipment and aircraft. Fawcett’s expedition, once he finally funded it, would cost less than the price of a single one of his rival’s radios. Rice had also, to Fawcett’s anger, once killed a group of Yanomami Indians who were threatening his men, and had reportedly brought bombs on his present expedition to scare away cannibal tribes.

Fact: Fawcett often turned to psychics, mediums and the occult for guidance.

In the movie, Fawcett consults a psychic while on the battlefield in France during World War I. While Grann doesn’t write of this specific instance, he does detail the explorer’s prolonged interest in the occult. When he was stationed in Ceylon, Fawcett became acquainted with a Russian psychic named Madame Blavatsky, who would eventually amass followers around the globe. He was rumored to have used a ouija board to help him make strategic decisions during the war and to communicate with his mother during a seance. He especially turned to the spiritual world during the early 1920s, when he felt abandoned by the scientific establishment. Where they doubted his claims, spiritualists confirmed them.

Fact: After one expedition, the polar explorer James Murray accused Fawcett of attempted murder.

Fawcett kept an inhuman pace as he trekked through treacherous terrain and had little patience for those who couldn’t keep up. One companion on his 1911 expedition to explore the Heath River, the scientist James Murray (played in the movie by Agnus Macfayden), was out of shape and contemptuous of taking orders of Fawcett. As the movie depicts, his failure to keep pace in conjunction with his many ailments posed a threat to the entire group, so Fawcett arranged to have him carried out of the jungle. Back in England after the expedition, Murray accused the explorer of leaving him for dead. While the RGS didn’t believe Fawcett was guilty, neither did they want a scandal, so they asked Fawcett to apologize. It’s unclear whether he did, but he did reconcile with the Society. Murray, meanwhile, disappeared on an Arctic expedition in 1913.

Mostly fact: Percy Fawcett and his son Jack set out on their expedition in 1925 and disappeared five months later.

In the movie, Fawcett and his 21-year-old son set out together for Z. In reality, they had a third British companion, Jack’s best friend Raleigh Rimmell. Whereas the film’s Jack has to persuade his father to return to the jungle, Fawcett was the one who enlisted his eager son for a journey. Because they had sold the rights to the journey to a consortium of North American newspapers, the trio had 40 million readers following along. The three men set out from Cuiabá, Brazil, on April 20, 1925 and sent dispatches for five months before going dark. The last letter Fawcett wrote to his wife read, “You need have no fear of any failure.”

Possibly fact, possibly fiction: The explorers were captured by hostile Indians.

While the film is ambiguous about their fate, it suggests that the men were captured by Indians, leaving the audience to imagine the rest. Grann posits a theory based on his own meeting with the Kalapalo Indians, who were at one time accused of killing the explorers. In 1951, the Kalapalos had offered up a skeleton which they said belonged to Fawcett — but which actually belonged to the grandfather of the chief who hosted Grann — in order to prevent more white people from coming into their territory to search for the men. LIFE magazine declared the bones the “final chapter in 25-year-old search.” But what actually happened, according to their oral history, was that the Kalapalos gave the men food and warned them not to venture further, because hostile tribes would surely kill them. The men continued on, ignoring their warnings. “People always say the Kalapalos killed the Englishmen,” the Kalapalo chief told Grann.” But we did not. We tried to save them.”

Fact: Nina never gave up on finding her husband and son, and many rescue missions were mounted to find them.

Nina spent the rest of her life believing that her husband and son were still alive. Thousands volunteered for recovery missions, and upwards of 100 people died during attempts to rescue them, or at least discover their fate. Rumors flew freely — they had “gone native,” they had been killed by Indians, that Jack had a son with an Indian woman. A 17-year-old boy named Dulipé, suspected to be Fawcett’s grandson, was pulled from the jungle and photographed for LIFE, before it was determined that he was an Indian with albinism. In 1996, an expedition of Brazilian scientists searching for clues was captured by Indians before negotiating its way out of the jungle.

Bonus: Was there a lost city, after all?

In attempting to retrace Fawcett’s steps, Grann ended up in a Kuikuro Village where University of Florida archaeologist Michael Heckenberger was living. Heckenberger showed Grann a dip in the earth that had once been part of a large concentric circle of moats. The moats had surrounded one of 20 pre-Columbian settlements that thrived between the ninth and seventeenth centuries. Connected by roads and causeways which were planned at right angles, according to the four cardinal directions, the settlements had mostly decomposed because they had been constructed with organic materials. But the cities were built, Heckenberger told Grann, with “a sense of engineering and mathematics that rivaled anything that was happening in much of Europe at the time.”

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The Lost City of Z (2016)

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