The Lost City of Z: James Gray found [critique]

With this film to be rewatched tonight on Cstar, James Gray changes register but remains faithful to his obsessions.

The Lost City of Zthe beautiful adventure film from James Grayreturns to television a few days later his tribute to the Deauville festival. Here is the very enthusiastic review of Firstpublished upon its cinema release in March 2017.

Since then, the American filmmaker has signed Ad Astra And Armageddon Timetwo equally interesting works.

Apparently, The Lost City of Z looks like a break in James Gray's filmography: the usual descendants of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe have given way to a British squire in search of respectability. The change in environment is not only social, but also geographical: no more increasingly confined urban settings (in The Immigrantwe almost never saw the sky), welcome to a more primitive and spacious jungle. However, Gray found in David Grann's documentary book, which traces the journey of an obsessive explorer, a reservoir of themes that he knows by heart: the thirst for freedom, destiny, family, heredity, the obsession. Just as in his previous films, where the characters sought, in vain, to free themselves from their social determinism, it is the same motivation that drives the young officer Percy Fawcett, subjected to cruel class contempt as we see at the beginning of the film. He has just killed a deer while hunting (a nod to Journey to the end of hell), and while custom would have him invited to the elite table, a sycophant points out that this would be inappropriate since Fawcett was “somewhat unfortunate in the choice of his ancestors” (his father was an alcoholic). It is therefore in the hope of clearing his family's name that he accepts a mission as a cartographer in the Amazon (a job which hides more political concerns aimed at preserving the interests of the Empire). During the expedition full of dangers, he is seized by the virus of adventure to the point of transforming into a Sysiphe of exploration: is he addicted to risk or does he really believe in the existence of a Eldorado?

James Gray: “I designed Armageddon Time as a ghost story”

Blood ties

Alongside his story, Grann's book also tells of the journalist's obsession with chasing his subject. James Gray does the same thing: by identifying with the explorer (even in his difficulties in financing his projects), he implicitly delivers the portrait of a filmmaker in perpetual quest for new forms. The result is sumptuous and exciting, even if Gray plows his furrow by once again illustrating his favorite theme, the irreducible bonds of blood. We can imagine that, like the filmmaker's previous heroes, Fawcett was trying to escape his family by going into the jungle. But it is to better return to his own people. From this point of view, the domestic episodes, which see the explorer finding his wife (Sienna Miller) and his children, take on an unprecedented importance in this type of story. And as always with Gray, the balance ends up tipping to the good side: after a phase of revolt motivated by Fawcett's repeated absences, his eldest son not only ends up reconciling with his father, but adopts his cause.

Jungle Opera

The subject is so dense that Gray has difficulty fitting everything in without exceeding two hours and twenty-one hours. He therefore made drastic choices, made cuts, ellipses and potentially frustrating shortcuts. The viewer can compensate by relying on literary references (Conrad or Kipling, duly cited), and cinematographic (John Huston, but also Cimino, Coppola, Herzog) which help to grasp the intention of the scenes if they fail to fully savor them. . This optional use of quotation does not make Gray a postmodern filmmaker. His staging is essentially classic, and the result of his collaboration with his usual composer Christopher Spellman and cinematographer Darius Khondji (who shot on film), is more reminiscent of a jungle opera than the traditional adventure film. In his next, he will tackle science fiction. We await it with interest.

Charlie Hunnam failed to sympathize with Robert Pattinson on The Lost City of Z