The Lost City Of Z made Robert Pattinson unrecognizable while illuminating his talent
Film Features Watch This
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: You don’t have to go to the theater to get your Robert Pattinson fix. We’re looking back on some of the best performances from the one-time vampire, future caped crusader.
The Lost City Of Z (2016)
The first time you see Robert Pattinson in James Gray’s masterful The Lost City Of Z, you might not even realize you’re watching him. Onboard steam ship the S.S. Panama in 1906, the film’s protagonist, Percival “Percy” Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), is journeying to Brazil on behalf of the British government. An officer and nobleman stuck in the galley, bunking alongside roughnecks ready to steal from him at the slightest lapse in his guard, Fawcett is understandably on high alert. So when someone starts following him deep into the ship’s bowels after nearly a week, Fawcett assumes the worst, lies in wait, and throws the man to the ground while pointing a gun at his head. The stranger turns out to be Henry Costin (Pattison), who replied to his ad in the Times for an aide-de-camp. Wondering why Costin waited so long into the trip before seeking him out, Fawcett gives him a sniff. “Are you drunk?” Costin’s reply: “No… well, I might’ve had a little.” As introductions go, it’s hardly propitious.
But the character—and actor playing him—soon prove their worth. Based on David Grann’s 2009 nonfiction book of the same name (though heavily reworked), Gray’s near-mythological narrative recounts the life’s work of Fawcett, a British geographer and explorer, as he spent decades searching for “Z,” a fabled lost city in the Amazon. After his and Costin’s initial successful mapping expedition unearths some ancient pottery and stone icons (and makes Fawcett a minor celebrity), he becomes convinced of the city’s existence, and would subsequently return several more times to South America, often with Costin in tow. Each trip is beset with troubles—including the final one, which Fawcett embarks upon with his now-grown son (Tom Holland). Without deviating too far from the historical record, Gray offers an ambiguous, even hallucinatory conclusion to the man’s obsessive crusade.
Pattinson quietly underplays his role from start to finish, and the film aids him in his task. Buried under a bushy beard and wide-brimmed hat, with round spectacles and a dusty, oily visage, the actor is often half-bathed in darkness, either at night or under the shadows cast by the towering and indifferent canopies of the jungle. These choices help keep this otherwise plainspoken man a bit enigmatic, but it’s Pattinson who makes him magnetic: a man of hardscrabble pragmatism, a reformed drunk who finds new purpose through his friendship with Fawcett and his inspirational if foolhardy conviction. Costin’s usual frankness only underscores his moments of passion, such as the exultant cry he emits when the men first spot the waterfalls of their destination, or the faraway, weary look in his eyes when telling Fawcett he’s sitting out what would become the explorer’s final trip into the unknown.
It’s worth noting this is far and away the James Gray film least driven by its performances. Somehow both preserving and undercutting the romanticism of the traditional adventure yarn, the director takes the Herzogian tact of dwarfing his characters with the beautiful but unforgiving scenery. But Gray is a classicist, not a postmodern deconstructionist. His sweeping wide shots and rich, painterly compositions are in service of grand themes of spiritual yearning, and that familiar human dissatisfaction with what life hands us. Against the epic canvas Gray paints, there’s Pattinson, an ordinary man who finds himself pushed to the extraordinary by his larger-than-life associate. It’s a genuine supporting turn: Pattinson serves the story, making it seem more real and alive, and providing a dose of authentic humanity in the process.
Availability: The Lost City Of Z is streaming on Amazon Prime, and can also be rented or purchased from Google Play, iTunes, YouTube, Fandango, Flixfling, and VUDU.
26 Comments
A great film. An Indiana Jones film for grown-ups.
Indiana Jones, is an Indiana Jones for grown-ups.
Fell asleep during
Ditto.
Lucky you!
I hate James Gray but I liked this movie. The main thing I got out of it, though, was that I need a movie where Pattinson plays John Lennon during the lost weekend he was in LA. Daniel Radcliffe as Ringo. Ben Schwarz as Phil Spector. Owen Wilson as Harry Nilsson. Yoko as herself.
I…need this. Please get this greenlit soon.
I think the main character would have to be May Peng, cast an unknown naturally
Pattinson: I’m doing it nasal!Director: I need it nasaler! Nasaler!!!
The perfect Beatles casting already exists: Paul Rudd as John, Jack Black as Paul, Justin Long as George, and Jason Schwartzman as Ringo.
Yeah that was funny but: Daniel Kaluuya as Billy Preston. Very difficult to cast McCartney at that age, maybe Logan Lerman?
I convinced my wife that we should go to see this on the back of the review on here. We both found it dull AF and it felt a good half hour longer than it actually was.
Shrug
I found it rather dull as well. I was also annoyed that the film tried make him a representative of modern attitudes in a prior era when the real guy was not like that.
Tis is an excellent movie, but the book really drives the ironic tragedy of the situation home in a way the movie cant. Satellite imagery shows there were almost certainly multiple ‘cities of z’ and that Fawcett was standing on them. But with the technology available to him made it so he could endlessly wander the jungle and never know it
At least in the U.S., this really is an overlooked movie. During a rare excursion to the theater that year, we were deciding between this and “Get Out.” For months I regretted choosing TLCoZ because no one saw it and it was instantly forgotten, whereas people couldn’t stop talking about “Get Out.” Later, after seeing GO, I realized we’d made the right decision.
I liked Get Out quite a bit, but it’s a very good entry in an action-horror subgenre that I don’t completely love (it’s satisfying when the protagonist of Get Out or You’re Next beats the shit out of the antagonist, but it undermines the dread). I prefer horror movies that are out there and irrational, which is to say that I preferred Us. Anyway, Lost City of Z is a really good movie that I enjoyed watching.
Us would have worked better if it had explained less.
Did Disney+ just announce the live execution of Robert Pattinson, or is September now Robert Pattinson month?
He co-stars in Tenet, the only movie out at the moment, and they just released a trailer for The Batman, so he’s got more going on than most actors right now.Also, I heard he has COVID19, but that might be unrelated.
that might be unrelated
Actually, he’s just surprisingly dedicated to synergizing with the AV Club.
And I’m sure that piccolini cuscino launch is just around the corner.
Every month is Robert Pattinson month if you try hard enough.
Thanks for letting us know you failed to read the articles you are bitching about.
Oh god, you are not promoting this movie!!!
It is one of the worst movies I have ever seen, I have seen Grease 2. UGH! I walked out, I had to take a break from the insanity. I did go back in, but only because I went with a group. I was at the point of heckling the movie in a full theater, it was so bad. Actually that may be why I had to get out of the theater, as I was about to start yelling at the screen…
I couldn’t remember why I thought the movie was so bad… Here were my thoughts that I had written after just having seen The Lost City of Z:
I keep hoping they stop making movies like this.It
was god awful, and a huge waste of time. They could have cut an hour from
the movie, for a start. Then someone explain the appearing and
disappearing explorer entourage and equipment, depending on a given
moment. At one point they have a horse, and then they don’t, or they
lose a boat one would have never been aware had existed until they
mentioned it was lost. Then they put a dying man on their last horse to
find a mining camp, but just prior they had been on a (one single) canoe, where was
this last horse hiding? Or the sudden appearance of five additional men
in their group of four. When exactly did the dying man who could not
walk get up to secretly destroy all their food, though he had been long
gone on the horse? Where did the deluge of flood water come from on the
rocks, the flood was not evident a moment later when the group was all
looking at the ruined supplies…. Were the supplies ruined by lamp oil? or as
described later, by paraffin wax? WTH is going on? This movie is so
poorly put together I started making up lines to keep myself entertained
while I waited for it to all be over. How about the inexplicable aging
of Percy Fawcett and his wife through the film, but of literally no one one else.
The men that were already old at the start of the film, never get older
over the 20+ year time span of the film, neither does Jack Percy, once he
is supposed to be ostensibly , say twelve(?!?) It’s hard to tell what
age Jack is supposed to be, or how much time has passed at any given
time, save for the random chyron providing a time frame with a date,
other times the chyron provides no date… Anyway, Jack never ages from
twelve (maybe 15?) to when he is supposed to be in his twenties, while
his father suddenly looks to be in his sixties. Were all the members of
the RGS moronic? At one point an auditorium full of members are booing,
jeering, and claiming Percy was out of his mind for his claims of the
lost city, and a moment later are giving him a standing ovation for
exclaiming that he is going back for another expedition, with no reason
for their change of opinion… It is all very distracting and confusing.
It became the movie that felt like it would just not end, but thankfully it does,
once the one fantasy scene and a flashback occur.I
am flummoxed by the praise this film is getting for anything other than
it’s costuming. Seriously, did I see the only demented version of this
movie, and everyone else saw the director’s cut?