Film: The Lost City of Z

In The Lost City of Z, James Gray has turned the lure of voyages of discovery into cinema. It is not ecstatic or overly romantic, but earthly yet lyrical.

The jungle film family has a new and highly gifted member: The Lost City of Z, the latest brain child of James Gray. The American director is hailed for films like Little Odessa, We Own the Night, and Two Lovers, but we still think he is a bit underrated. His classicism is not old-fashioned, it is timeless. The Lost City of Z was filmed on 35mm in the jungle. With a great gift for light and colour, the virtuoso cameraman Darius Khondji has created sumptuous footage that is not attention-seeking. It is in part thanks to this cinematography that Gray can take things slowly without boring us.

He eschews the horror of Apocalypse Now and the madness of Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes and he's on his guard to avoid inappropriate dramatisation or romanticising. The snake does not bite. Nor does the cannibal. The explorer returns home safely, is celebrated, and then eagerly goes back to the jungle several times. The absence he inflicts on himself, his wife, and his children is made very tangible. Is this the most intimate of all jungle films?

The Royal Geographic Society sends the British soldier Percival Fawcett (based on a historical figure from a hundred years ago) to map the border territory between Bolivia and Brazil. He mainly seeks glory and rehabilitation. That changes when he finds traces of an ancient city in the Amazon. He becomes obsessed with proving that the primitive tribes in the jungle are descended from a civilisation that outstripped the narrow-minded Westerners.

He is disappointed when the hidden city proves difficult to find, but it only makes his desire burn more strongly. His abandoned wife takes comfort in a verse by Robert Browning: "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a heaven for?"

> The Lost City of Z. US, 2017, dir.: James Gray, act.: Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, 140 min.
> UGC De Brouckère, UGC Gulden Vlies/Toison d'Or