![]() In bringing to the screen Fawcett’s experience, Gray needed to capture not only the beauty, but also the danger that lay around every bend in the river. “They stood like a lost world, forested to their tops, and the imagination could not picture the last vestiges of an age long vanished." His wondrous description of the area inspired Sherlock Holmes’ creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to write his 1912 novel The Lost World, about an imaginary land filled with ape-men and dinosaurs in the heart of the Amazon. “Time and the foot of man had not touched these summits,” he wrote in his journal. During his second voyage, the sight of the breathtaking Ricardo Franco hills filled him with a profound sense of awe and humility. In the process, he would uncover many new worlds. ![]() He would spend the rest of his life looking for definitive proof of that lost city. The scientific community roundly derided many of Fawcett's discoveries, including his belief that shards of pottery uncovered during his first trip pointed to an ancient empire buried in the jungle. ![]() So mysterious was the Amazon at the time that many Europeans believed anything was possible, while at the same time scoffing at actual field reports. It’s full of blank spaces.” Fawcett’s desire to fill in those spaces underscores a unique emotional experience cherished by every adventurer, that ineffable moment when the unmapped and unknown world reveals itself. When the Royal Geographical Society first approached Fawcett to survey the wilderness between Bolivia and Brazil, they pointed to a map of South America and said, “Look at this area. But it is nearly impossible to imagine how such a river trip felt at the turn of the century when every noise signaled the existence of a strange new creature, or perhaps something more ominous. One can even raft down the Rio Verde in the Mato Grosso area of Brazil. But that modern metropolis is a far cry from the lawless outpost that greeted Fawcett after a grueling climb over a 17,000 foot-high Andean pass in 1906. Today one can visit the Bolivian town of Cobija. Shooting the film on location in Colombia, Gray and his cinematographer, Academy Award ®-nominated Darius Khondji, strove to recreate the wondrous sights and sounds that Fawcett experienced at the turn of the century. But it is what happened to him during his last expedition in 1925 alongside his son, Jack (played by Tom Holland), that remains perhaps his greatest mystery. “His dream of finding an ancient Amazonian civilization sustained him through unimaginable hardships, the skepticism of the scientific community, startling betrayals and years spent away from his family.” Fawcett’s numerous trips to the region unlocked endless secrets about the Amazon’s flora and fauna, as well as its geography and local populations. “Here was a person for whom the search meant everything,” explains Gray. In adapting David Grann’s bestselling nonfiction book of the same name, Gray was fascinated by Fawcett’s unquenchable spirit of adventure and exploration. Leaving his wife, Nina (Sienna Miller), behind in England, Fawcett and his aide-de-camp, Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson), disappear into a world few Europeans had ever experienced to uncover a lost land no one anticipated. Writer/director James Gray’s adventure epic, The Lost City of Z, follows British explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) through his many voyages into the unknown jungles of the Amazon in the first part of the 20 th century.
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