If not for the ineffably modern hollowness of Charlie Hunnam’s speaking voice, or the distinct rind of 21st century celebrity that still clings to co-star Robert Pattinson like the dying traces of yesterday’s cologne, someone could easily be fooled into thinking that “The Lost City of Z” was shot 40 years ago. In fact, that might be the greatest compliment a viewer could pay writer-director James Gray (“The Immigrant”), a man who seems increasingly determined to revive the glory days of our national cinema, when movie were pictures and auteurs were mavericks. Gray pulls from the past as liberally as Quentin Tarantino, but without the ego — he doesn’t try to process his influences through the slaughterhouse of his own…

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Percy Fawcett, the subject under a dual-microscope in James Gray's latest memory flip-book, forces the viewer to reconsider Adventure - as a genre and as a daydream - through immense meditation to his particular obsessions and mystifying personal narrative. Being both a product of colonialism and a primitive prognosticator of empathetic relations to other cultures, he's a White Explorer desperately trying to rebel against the stigma even as he continues to roam the jungle in search of a fabled city spoken in whispers and translations comprised of miscommunication. Whether he reached his destination is unknown, but Fawcett's idealism feeds Gray's melancholic grasp on clinical study and, without revealing the trick, his own personal interpretation of the story. The Lost…

Ein zerfaserter Bombast-Streifen, der fragmentarisch das Leben des Forschungsreisenden Percy Fawcett nacherzählt, dabei aber einfach zu viel will und so seinem Protagonisten niemals nahe kommt. Nach zweieinhalb Stunden und zig Episoden mit blassen Nebenfiguren bleibt einem der Mann, der die versunkene Stadt „Z“ im Dschungel des Amazonas sucht, so fremd wie in den ersten Minuten der Expedition, in der frühe Verluste und Entbehrungen dem Zuschauer bereits mit einem Pathos als Schicksalsweg und persönliche Passion verkauft werden, wie es sich Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant nach über zwei Stunden gerade erst mühsam und redlich erarbeitet hat. Hinzu kommen schwülstige Bilder und „edle Wilde“, die der vermutlich echten Härte der historischen Reise eine unangemessene Künstlichkeit verleihen. Zu dieser tragen auch das übermäßig…

"To look for what is beautiful is it's own reward."

That is the theme of The Lost City of Z, a marvelously recreated, on-location shot, strong performance containing, historical, biographical, epic story of Percy Fawcett and his real-life search for what he dubbed "the city of Zed," a supposed ancient civilization in the midst of the Amazon rainforest. The Lost City of Z is a movie of whose type I have not seen the like in a good, long while. It reminds me of books I used to read as a kid by G.A. Henty and H. Rider Haggard, inspiring stories of adventure based in near-unbelievable but still true places and times. It will remind others of Indiana Jones, whose…

Questo è un grandissimo film: James Gray decide di restituire un po' di dignità al cinema Hollywoodiano attraverso una storia che ci parla di ambizione e di allargamento dei confini, geografici e della mente.
Mentre in Europa si avviano i disastrosi meccanismi che porteranno alla Prima Guerra Mondiale, un maggiore dell'esercito, che ambisce a un riconoscimento tra suoi pari, accetta una missione che ha lo scopo di mappare un'area contesa tra Brasile e Bolivia ricca di alberi della gomma. Questo viaggio gli permetterà di fare i conti con l'abisso dell'umanità, il colonialismo e con la spinta di per se stessa progressiva dell'esplorazione. In un occidente sempre più chiuso nelle false regole di civiltà che mascherano un senso di superiorità nei…