Brief Thoughts On James Gray’s The Lost City Of Z.

James Gray’s patest film, his long-gestating adaptation of David Grann’s novelist retelling of the life of Percy Fawcett, The Lost City Of Z is little short of a cinematic marvel.

The American filmmaker has long impressed, with his Two Lovers one of the very best of the last decade. Similar to The Immigrant, a film which languished in post-production hell (and a film which to this day has gone without a UK release), The Lost City Of Z is a yarn set at the turn of the century, an era befitting of Gray’s classical style. It’s a huge picture, calling to mind the likes of John Huston and Luchino Visconti, and one that traverses the globe to bring conflicting scenes of war and natural tropical beauty. That Gray was ever afforded the opportunity to make such a picture, and on such a scale, is the stuff that dreams are made of.

Fawcett’s world is a harsh one, with risk at every turn. An early sequence, involving a piranha attack, could easily have been a third act set piece in another film, such is the sense of risk and peril involved. Instead, here it serves as a warning shot, a sign of things to come.

These moments of great spectacle are punctuated and grounded by a great sense of character. Fawcett’s anti-authority wife, Nina, might be the most interesting player in the whole thing, while the grand départ which sees the film enter its final act is carried by one of the most exhilarating pieces of editing in recent memory, as the splicing machine flickers between the sight of a train leaving its station and that of the bedrooms of the people being left behind. For Fawcett, the stakes are high, and so are those for Gray as director, here given the widest canvas possible for any filmmaker. Impressive would be an understatement.