The Lost City of Z - Offers Much to Contemplate

Rating: 8/10 (9 June 2018)

Director/Producer/Writer James Gray certainly takes on complex subjects - giving himself some difficult tasks as well as a challenge for his distributors. As with his lushly detailed 'The Immigrant' in'13, 'The Lost City of Z' presents us with a series of dazzling images from prolific director of photography Darius Khondji, to grace this haunting, factual, unsolved expedition into the jungles of Peru. The title (while accurate) may be an unwise choice as it suggests a silly Indiana Jones type adventure yarn - and that, this high quality, serious, movie is defiantly not. This feeling can be picked up through the tone of some unkind viewer comments from those only wanting cheap action fiction. Superb locations, performances, and a lush music score all contribute to an engaging cinema experience.
While the movie is quite longish (though, fully sustained) one curious problem re-occurs in several sections - that the film looks as it may have been edited from a longer narrative via pre or post-production cuts. If this were the case then it would explain some odd continuity gaps tending to leave the viewer to fathom out some unexplained time shifts. Otherwise, it's always compelling and offers totally professional production values to recommend it to the discerning viewer.