Review of The Lost City of Z (2017) by Jeffrey S — 25 Sep 2017

This is an odd movie to get a solid grasp on. It's essentially three movie types packed into an epic 2 and a half hours.

The first is an old school Amazon pulp film done in a modern realistic style. So there's cannibals, disease, and piranhas oh my! This first third of the film does a good job of sort of reflecting the early 20th's century's British explorer in the vein of deepest darkest Africa kind of films. Only it's a lot less cornball pulp and much more Heart of Darkness in a way.

The second part of this film is an old school epic. In a similar vein to Doctor Zhivago or Ben Hur. Where we follow massive parts of a person's life during an interesting time period. Sweeping vistas and a bombastic orchestral score are common portions of those kind of movies.

Last we have the biopic piece. This movie is ultimately based off of a real guy and the real exploits that he went through. So there's a portion in the movie that feels kind of at odds with the rest of it and that's when the real life Major Fawcett went to World War 1 and served. It makes for a great battle and some interesting reflection on his home life vs duty, but it's awkwardly placed in as a transition to the last expedition. Which ends as a sort of open ended question mark because that's what happened in history.

Now the most important question is, would you like the movie? That's a hard one to answer. If you're a person like me and you enjoy long epic movies with an equal interest in early exploration / The Great War period, alongside an undercurrent of tones exploring human ambition. Then yes you will likely find this movie interesting. An added bonus of being wonderfully shot with a high production value.

However if you're the kind of person with zero interest in the time period and hate "slow" movies where a lot of time is given to cinematography. Then you wouldn't like this movie.

Added note that some people may be rather conflicted by the character himself, as he seems to on the one hand support natives as being more than savages during a time where that was no a highly supported point of view. On the other hand though he clearly also supports old fashioned British patriarchy with regards to his wife & children. The biggest character arc we see actually is Fawcett's shift from respecting Lordly titles and wanting to move into British upper crust society. To seeing nobles as basically incompetent and realizing that it's about the mettle of a person and not their titles that makes them who they are. Certainly contrasting ideas at odds with each other. If you're the kind of person who gets hung up on one aspect or the other, then this movie may not be for you either.

If you have some time to spare though and want to just try something different in a sort of modern throwback to a classic genre that has mostly vanished. One could do far worse than The Lost City of Z.