The most beautiful image in the film, in fact, is one of death: fallen overboard, one of the explorers gets trapped in a fishing net as piranha attack, the sunlight from above framing his writhing body as a shadowy figure worthy of Rembrandt. The river at once glistens with delight and churns with menace. Firelight casts a soft glow towards the corners of the screen, before eventually giving way to the maw of blackness. Working with cinematographer Darius Khondji, as he did on The Immigrant, Gray makes this jungle at once imposing and luxurious, as if the fronds were made of poisonous velvet. One thing is certain: few epic adventures have been filmed as lustrously as The Lost City of Z. By the end we’re left wondering if his obsession led to ultimate enlightenment or devastating loss. Yet the movie also allows the possibility that Fawcett’s wholehearted embrace of this other world was his personal undoing. Adapted by director James Gray from the 2009 nonfiction book by David Grann, this is a modern, enlightened take on the explorer narrative surely National Geographic would approve. Was Fawcett ahead of his time, or simply mad? That’s the tension explored in The Lost City of Z. Despite the professional scoffing of his colleagues and the palpable, increasing loneliness of his wife (Sienna Miller) and young family, Fawcett returns to the Amazon three times over the course of his life, determined-as he puts it-to “tear down their narrow-minded convictions.” Sent to map the Amazon jungle, Fawcett returns enamored with the indigenous cultures he encountered and obsessed with a fabled city that is said to lurk deep within the forest. As real-life British explorer Percy Fawcett in The Lost City of Z, Charlie Hunnam is something of a woke Indiana Jones.

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