Beginning with a flashback, we open in the frigid hinterlands of Norway; a remote cabin specifically, where a policeman arrives with a pack of fresh supplies for the sole occupants -- a mother and her young son. And while this visit seems good natured at first, things quickly turn sinister as the man administers a history test to the boy; and for every hesitation or wrong answer received the man violently slaps the mother for his lack of education -- and slaps her so hard he eventually knocks her off a chair.
Here, the audience eventually pieces together the boy is the police officer’s illegitimate son, and when she threatens to reveal this to his wife, he storms off, threatening never to return, leaving them high and dry -- well, high and frozen to death. And that’s why the wife and son wind up in a Volvo, chasing him down the mountain and over the fjords on treacherously icy roads. And that’s also why they wind up spinning-out and find themselves on the middle of a not frozen enough lake. And while the boy gets out as the ice shatters underneath them, the distraught mother stays put and suicides out, much to the distress of the boy.
Now, this opening coda gives us several tell-tale clues and signatures that this boy most likely grew up to be The Snowman: a notorious serial killer, who stalks and abducts women and dismembers them, leaving a snowman at the sight of the abduction and another where the body was dumped, usually with the victim’s head as the top snowball. The Snowman also taunts the police over his homicidal misadventures, sending cryptic notes to the lead detective, claiming all the clues to his motives and identity are there if they can piece it all together.
The Snowman’s latest target is Harry Hole (Fassbender), a full time drunk and lead detective for the Oslo police department’s major crimes unit. Of course, Hole is one of those black-out drunks who is so good at his job it earns him a ton of slack from his boss (Vibert) and his ex-wife, Rachel (Gainsbourg), and (maybe) their son. Anyoo, between waking up on park benches or passing out in back alleys, the highly morose Hole is roped into a missing person’s case by his new partner, the recently transferred Katrine Bratt (Ferguson), when a mother goes missing under dubious circumstances -- the most dubious being a snowman left in her yard.
Katrine believes this new case might be tied to an old cold case, which Hole and the movie confirms via some really odd flashbacks to an earlier investigation, involving another blackout drunk detective named Rafto (Kilmer), who eventually committed suicide before solving the crime -- which is eventually revealed to be a murder staged as a suicide by the Snowman because he got too close to the truth.
And as Hole and Katrine run down several leads and suspects, receive more taunting notes from the killer, and unearth more victims, they piece together the killer is targeting women who do not live up to his standards of an ideal mother; women who either had abortions or had children out of wedlock. Hole also manages to piece together why this case is so personal to Katrine. And while she thinks this all connects to a prostitution ring run by a local doctor (Vibert) and a high-ranking politician (Simmons), and follows these notions to her doom, Hole discovers who the killer really is and discovers it all hits a little closer to home...
Based on one of Jo Nesbø’s novels about a self-destructive detective, Harry Hole, The Snowman was the seventh of eleven serialized adventures, whose resolution hinges on the discovery that all of the victims' children have different fathers from the men they believe to be their actual father. And apparently, this film adaptation had a steep hill to climb from the get-go due to people being hung-up on the sexual connotation of the lead character’s name.
The name is derived from the word Hólar, which translates as "round and isolated hill" and can be traced back to the Viking Age. And it’s pronounced as two syllables, which makes it technically pronounced as Harry Holy, and why the filmmakers ignored this and went with Harry Hole as the better choice has me shrugging right now. And besides, the lead character’s name would prove to be the least of this film’s problems.
I had heard terrible things about this movie and the floundering box-office kind of backed all this backlash up, and yet I went -- specifically to see if it was as bad as people were saying. And was it really that bad? Well, The Snowman (2017) is by no means the worst film I've ever seen it is also not very good -- at all. And how a film with this much clout behind the camera and so much talent in front of it turned into this confusing morass of *yeesh* that was dumb is kinda hard to comprehend. According to the IMDB, Martin Scorsese was supposed to direct the film but backed out, remaining an executive producer. There were also rumors concerning Ridley Scott coming on board but the film eventually wound up in the hands of Tomas Alfredson, who directed the truly wonderful Scandinavian horror tale, Let the Right One In (2008), and the ambitious adaptation of John Le Carre's cold war epic, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011).
And while he once again captures the surreal and ominous beauty of the Norwegian winter, we quickly discover rote police procedurals are not really in Alfredson’s wheelhouse. And what little good will the director actually earned is completely undone by the eventual demise and final fate of the killer as things come full circle. A true “booga-booga” moment that was so awful and stupid I can’t even even.
In front of the camera, Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson do their damndest to salvage a messy script and some chainsaw editing that results in some masssive leaps in plot logic. In fact, I would love to see Fassbender try it again with this character but in more comfortable genre hands. Also, someone give Ferguson some decent material to work with? Please and thank you. They are not helped by a script that is marred with oddities, twists, and underdeveloped characters that my best guess requires prior knowledge from the novels to make a lot of this make any sense. As a prime example of this, we have a character played by Chloë Sevigny, who is introduced, then killed off five seconds later with her head being chopped off, but then immediately returns as a ‘just so happens to be an identical twin’ to provide a pivotal piece of information and is then never heard from again. What the hell? Why? And that’s just one of myriad examples of interwoven plot threads that serve no purpose, go nowhere, or are left to die on the vine like the whole prostitution ring angle or the opening coda misfire because I'm still not sure if they wanted us to think the boy at the beginning was supposed to be Harry. Again, me, with the shrugging.
Worst of all is the flashbacks to the earlier investigation, whose initial transition to the past period was botched so badly I thought the detectives played by Val Kilmer and Toby Jones were just in another city trying to solve a concurrent crime committed by the Snowman that would eventually crossover with the Fassbender and Ferguson plot. But, nope. That was all in the past. I can’t quite remember when I finally sussed this out during the screening but I quickly realized it didn’t make that much of a difference. The film was already long lost by then.
And while the scenes with Kilmer were folded in so badly, they still proved fascinating to watch in a runaway train wreck sense. (I think it was the hair that had me thinking his character was a drunk and disillusioned Chris Knight all grown up.) And I also spent way too much time wondering if that was what he really looks like now or if some nose and jowls prosthesis were involved. And as to why his character wound up horrifically dubbed over is a 'behind the scenes' production tale that I really look forward to reading some day.
In an effort at damage control, Alfredson has stated the production of The Snowman was too rushed. Coming into the film late in the game, the director reckons at least fifteen percent of the script was never filmed because the location filming in Norway was shortened to move the production back to London, which would explain a lot. “We didn’t get the whole story,” said Alfredson. “And when we started cutting we discovered that a lot was missing. It's like when you're making a big jigsaw puzzle and a few pieces are missing so you don't see the whole picture." And this might be another film, judging by what's seen in the trailer that doesn't show up in the film, where extensive re-shoots might've hurt more than helped.
Thus and so, one can understand why the slapped and dashed The Snowman has earned itself such a lackluster reputation and vacant theater seats. And I fear as production stories start leaking out, they will prove far more interesting than the finished film. Again, I found it to be more flabbergasting than awful, leaving the film in that nebulous gray area of mediocrity, where it’s not really good enough to be memorable but not bad enough to be laughable, meaning there is nothing there to enjoy on any level. And that is nowhere to be, cinematically speaking.
The Snowman (2017) Working Title Films :: Perfect World Pictures :: Another Park Film :: Universal Pictures / EP: Tomas Alfredson, Liza Chasin, Amelia Granger, Martin Scorsese, Emma Tillinger Koskoff / P: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Peter Gustafsson, Richard Hewitt, Alexander O'Neal, Robyn Slovo / LP: Tor Arne Øvrebø / D: Tomas Alfredson / W: Peter Straughan, Hossein Amini, Søren Sveistrup, Jo Nesbø (Novel) / C: Dion Beebe / E: Thelma Schoonmaker, Claire Simpson / M: Marco Beltrami / S: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Ronan Vibert, J.K. Simmons, Val Kilmer, Toby Jones
Our film opens in a rundown neighborhood, with a twitchy mom seeing her young daughter off on her training-wheeled bike; destination, to check on a nest of baby birds up the street. Seems simple but between the out of kilter soundtrack and Mom’s mournful stare as she carefully secrets something in the trash, we’re clued-in that something is amiss as danger draws near for one or both. But which one? Well, we get our answer quick as the daughter makes it back to the house in one piece -- just in time to see her mother commit suicide by hanging herself in the attic.
Jump ahead about ten years and the daughter, Clare (King), is now a senior in high school. A social outcast except for her two bestest buds, Meredith and June (Park, Purser), a day in the life for Clare is nothing but heaps of embarrassment (-- her deadbeat father is a pathological dumpster diving hoarder), and abusive hazing (-- the popular sect pick on her constantly and spread the mortifying results on social media). But things start to change for Clare when her father unearths an old Chinese wish box of some antiquity and then passes it off as a birthday present for his daughter. Able to translate some of the writing carved into it, which promises to grant seven wishes, Clare, unfortunately, is unable to decipher the fine print as her wishes start coming true, which warns these kinds of bargains with the unknown always come at a deadly price...
John Leonetti served as the cinematographer for James Wan’s fright franchises du jour, Insidious (2010) and The Conjuring (2013), before branching out and slipping into the director’s chair for the spin-off, Annabelle (2014), a film which wasn’t that terrible, I thought, and found myself pleasantly surprised by how much I genuinely liked it despite the rock stupid premise (-- I mean, who the hell in their right mind would buy a doll which looked like THAT?!); and then followed that up with the Charles Manson inspired Wolves at the Door (2016), which was his take on the gruesome Tate-LaBianca murders,
Here, his efforts for Wish Upon (2017) produced a film I also didn’t hate -- but I didn’t really like it all that much because it failed to engage me on almost every level -- well, at least until the drive home, where there was a dry-fart of rumination. (More on this in a sec.) And while the overall plot is full of holes and leaking logic, I think the biggest mistake the film makes is not making Clare sympathetic enough. Joey King, another Wan veteran, does her best but Barbara Marshall’s script does her no favors as all Clare gets in terms of character development is that she’s lost her mom, her dad’s a hopeless yutz, she likes her dog (-- until it dies to grant her first wish and is summarily forgotten), she has the soul of a repressed artist, and she is the victim of bullying -- all told in the broadest of strokes. That’s it.
This is then compounded by the fact her wishes are totally self-serving as she conjures up some money, popularity, a cute boyfriend, and revenge on the bitchy classmate (Langford) who torments her the most. And what’s worse, even after Clare finds out there is a "blood price" to be paid for each wish, meaning someone close to her will die to make the box work, like some meth-head looking for her next fix, the girl will not give up her new found social and financial high and keeps on wishing, which only reinforces how big of a petulant brat she’s been all along.
The film is also not helped out by it’s PG-13 rating at all. And while I freely admit Wish Upon was essentially Final Destination (2000) and Wishmaster (1997) by way of W.W. Jacobs with the serial numbers filed off, the film lacks any kind of punch for the elaborate, Rube-Goldbergian nature of the “accidental” deaths they set-up, meaning no gruesome payoffs and a lot of jarring edits to keep things clean and sanitized enough for the tweeners, leaving us with the asinine plot and terrible characters and nothing else to helps us endure. Things got so turgid and somnolent I even lost track of the wish-to-kill ratio and who died for which wish.
I don’t know. Maybe if Clare’s wishes had started backfiring on her, hinted at by the new enthralled beau (Slaggert), who is so obsessed with her he essentially becomes an ersatz stalker who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “No.” And when she grows tired of him and tries to “throw him back” he attempts suicide over this rejection. That kinda twist might’ve proved interesting if it had been expounded upon further. But instead the box just up and disappears, triggering more of that fine print, translated by Ryan (Lee), a friendly classmate with Chinese heritage, who reveals if you dump or lose the box before you make all seven wishes, all spent wishes will be undone. And so, Clare winds up back at square one, but seems content enough as she wasn’t really happy with all the ill-gotten stuff, either, truth told, but this, too, isn’t properly addressed. (Sensing a pattern here). At least she was content until finding out June stole the box from her; not to make her own wishes, but as an act of self-preservation so her selfish ass of a best friend would stop killing those around her -- like their friend Meredith, who was squashed to death in a runaway elevator.
And speaking of friend June, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am 100% Team Barb when it comes to Stranger Things (2016). And if you do not understand the Cult of Barb on your own, sorry, I cannot help you. You either get it, or you don’t. Anyhoo, it was kind of laughable how Leonetti framed certain shots and how several set-ups linger on Shannon Purser as if to say "Look! Lookie! Look! Look! Barb from Stranger Things is in our moooooovie." In fact, during one round of wishes, when Clare wants her dad (Phillippe) to get his crap together and be cool, he starts blowing hot jazz on the sax as the girls listen attentively, and then one of those lingering pans stops dead on June, then cuts to the dad, implying things are about to get weird between them. Again, that might’ve been an interesting twist on another backfiring wish if -- and stress on the “if” -- this was what the filmmaker had intended, which, of course, it was not.
As is, then, Wish Upon is a fairly dreadful movie for myriad reasons; and yet, it is also one of those horror films that gets infinitesimally better after you’ve left the theater and you start thinking about the ramifications of certain things they set-up but left to die on the vine so they could focus on something far less interesting. Like how when Clare almost kills June to get her two final wishes, she first asks to have her mom back. But during this otherwise cheery interlude (-- until her father is killed to pay the piper), we find out the mystery object mother Shannon (Röhm) was placing in the trash way back at the beginning of the movie was most likely the very same wish box, leaving the audience to extrapolate from the tales of woe and mass murder by the others who flagrantly possessed the wish box over the years, that her wishes also must’ve went awry. And so awry they did go, mommy-dearest wished for a do-over, but then chose to sacrifice herself to the demon in the box so it wouldn’t take her daughter as payment.
Thus and so, that whole incident with Shannon controlling the box was ret-conned out of existence, explaining why she wasn’t part of Ryan’s investigative recap. (But Jerry O’Connell was. Weird, I know. Long story.) And so, that is not the giant plot-hole some would have you believe it to be. How the box then got to where her dad found it, in the trash of a former victim, who died after making a seventh wish when the demon came for his due, well, you got me there -- and at this point, I’m getting tired of shoring up this scuttled script, because this also brings into question what are real memories and false memories of Clare’s past.
Of course, the film doesn’t address any of this either and it’s left to the audience to interpret for themselves as the ultimate climax comes full circle. Seems Clare thinks she knows how to beat the cursed box at its own game by spending her last request wishing her father had never found it (-- just like her mom?), hoping to negate all the damage she has done. And this works, to a point. Alas, to grant this final wish the box must still be paid; but unlike her mother, staying within character, Clare’s final sacrifice is totally unwitting and yet seemed oddly fitting given the circumstances.
And that, I guess, is the biggest problem I had with Wish Upon -- that it’s only a horror movie, or even passable entertainment, through implication and what the audience manages to piece together after the fact. (Most of the pieces we are given are round, and the holes they need to fit through are square. I understand if you do not have the patience to make it fit.) And while that kind of conjecture can be fun, it does you little good while you’re stuck in the theater as this thing flails around, failing to find traction on anything, and kinda wishing you weren’t even there.
Wish Upon (2017) Broad Green Pictures :: Busted Shark Productions :: Orion Pictures / EP: Daniel Hammond, Gabriel Hammond, Lauren McCarthy / P: Sherryl Clark, Brian Johnston / AP: Robert Leader, Ashley Peatross, Emily LaRene Roberts / LP: Victor Ho, Tracey Landon / D: John R. Leonetti / W: Barbara Marshall / C: Michael Galbraith / E: Peck Prior / M: tomandandy / S: Joey King, Ryan Phillippe, Ki Hong Lee, Shannon Purser, Sydney Park, Mitchell Slaggert, Josephine Langford, Elisabeth Röhm
As I’ve belabored elsewhere, our local cinema leaves a lot to be desired in a “I laugh in their face whenever they ask if I’d like to become a premium member” sense. I mean, they force you to sit through over twenty minutes of previews (-- not an exaggeration --) for films that at least 2/3rds of which will never, ever play there. And this is why I occasionally abandon my small micropolitan community and head to Lincoln or Omaha for an all day movie binge to catch films that likely won’t make it into the hinterlands of our beloved Stadium 7, which is also kinda like the Hotel California in that if you find the sticky seat or splotched spot on the floor you may never, ever leave again.
And so, off to Lincoln I went this last Thursday for a proposed triple-feature at the Marcus Grand Theater, my cinematic Shangri-La-multiplex, if you will, with the nice comfortable seats with the retractable arm rests, the minimal previews, and the wide selection of features. But things were a tad ominous when I entered the building and saw one whole wing of theaters was roped off and tarped over due to some kind of remodeling effort. And then, when I laid out my day of viewing with the cashier, everything was normal with the first feature but for the second and third I had to pick a reserved seat in the newly remodeled theaters with the new and much ballyhooed “Dreamloungers”.
Now, I hate having to pre-select a reserved seat (-- for reasons I’ll get into later--) but I had been to a theater with those kind of oversized Naugahyde-covered recliners before at a different venue, and while I wasn’t a huge fan of them, this apparently is the future of cinema, making a trip to the movies the exact same experience as staying in your basement. That’s me shrugging right now.
Anyhoo, my first feature of the day, Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire (2016), was in a theater that hadn’t been refurbished yet and so I got to pick my own seat on a first come first seated basis as the cinematic gods intended since moving images first flickered. The film itself takes place in 1978 and concerns a brokered arms deal between two IRA members, Chris and Frank (Cillian Murphy, Michael Smiley), looking to buy some M-16s from a smarmy South African arms dealer, Vernon (Sharlto Copley), and his right-hand man, Martin (Babou Ceesay), in an abandoned factory along the Boston waterfront. Brokering this deal is Justine (Brie Larson), and moderating this transaction is some hired mercenary named Ord (Armie Hammer).
Now, despite not getting quite what was asked for specifically, it appears the exchange of money for guns will go off without a hitch with everyone satisfied and happy. Well, at least it was until mere coincidence rears its ugly head when the local thugs hired by each group to do the heavy lifting prove to have a volatile history (Sam Riley, Jack Reynor), which soon escalates into a massive firefight between the now opposing factions. Complicating matters further for this free-fire-for-all shoot-out is the location, which is tailor-made for ricochets, and whose low-lighting has loyalties switching as stray shots turn into friendly fire. And as the damage adds up and things devolve into everyone for themselves, things get even trickier when two more shooters show up, hired by someone already there, who had intended an ambush to take the guns and the money and leave no witnesses before the shit hit the fan, leaving the audience to sort out true allegiances and figure who, if anyone, will still be standing come the end.
Turns out reserved seating wouldn’t have been that much of an issue as I wound up with a private screening of Free Fire. And let me tell ya, you all missed a pretty great movie. You kinda wind up rooting for everybody in this thing -- except for Steve-O (Riley), who gets exactly what is coming to him. (And come to think on it, everyone kinda gets exactly what they got coming to them in this thing.) The action is great, the characters endearing, and the comedy is delightfully black and morbid. Sharlto Copley kinda steals the movie as the vainglorious dolt Vern, and I fall more in love with Brie Larson with each successive movie I see her in, but, holy crap, between this and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) the resurgence of Armie Hammer has been equally fun to watch. That dude deserves a bigger box office break. And so, with its brief, but action-packed run-time, I guess one could consider Free Fire to be nothing more than a disposable actioneer. But don’t be surprised if you keep digging it back out of the trash to watch over and over again.
Thus and so, the only real complaint I had during my first screening had nothing to do with the movie but the amount of construction noise leaking through the walls. Nothing like a power saw and stripped screws leeching into your movie. Luckily, my lone but out loud laughter was enough to drown most of that out. Thankfully, the next showing was in a theater further away from this demilitarized zone. And so, after a quick bathroom break, I made a beeline for my next feature, the Disneynature documentary, Born in China (2016).
Okay. Let me back up for second and confess to something. I was a little hesitant to see this film, what with it being a Disney animal documentary and all. Why? Well, we all know what happens in a Disney nature documentary, right? Right. [ArmsFlailing/] THEY’RE GONNA KILL THE MAMA ANIMAL BECAUSE THEY ALWAYS KILL THE MAMA ANIMAL IN A DISNEY NATURE DOCUMENTARY!!! [/ArmsFlailing] *thud* You know it will happen, I said. I know, I answered. You will start blubbering like you always do, I said. I know, I also said. And you will turn into a sobbing puddle of goo like you always do with these kinda things. True, I said. Still, Circle of Life and all that. And so, as I bravely entered the theater, bracing for the worst, I found something that did reduce me to remorse, but it had nothing to do with the movie.
No, the movie itself was fantastic, immersive and beautifully shot as the cameras and our narrator, John Krasinski, took us by the hand and led us on a year long adventure into the wilds of China, splitting time between a giant panda and her cub (Ya-Ya and Mei-Mei), a golden snub-nosed monkey (Tao-Tao) trying to find his place in the family clan after the birth of a little sister, a herd of antelope-like chiru and their reproductive migration, and a mother snow leopard (Dawa) trying to raise two cubs in a desolate rocky landscape.
Often hilarious and sometimes harrowing and, yes, sometimes melancholy, this film is a treat. Not gonna lie, though. There were some tears as [SPOILERS] casualties included one baby monkey snatched up by a hawk and one baby sheep felled by a predator; but where I really lost it is when the snow leopard gave her all for her offspring but came up short. And while the film called for optimism in the face of this kind of sacrifice and tragedy, the ultimate and unrevealed fate of her cubs kind of left me on a bit of a bummer despite everything else being pretty delightful -- especially watching a runaway panda bouncing uncontrollably down a hillside.
Still, my biggest regret of seeing Born in China was not what I saw on screen but what I was forced to sit on to watch it, bringing us back to those Dreamloungers. Now, as I said before, I had been to one showing at an AMC theater that had recliners and that is exactly what they were: single seat recliners. What the Marcus theaters were offering, however, was not a single seat recliner but a small two person loveseat with a retractable divider arm. Taking this in when I found my designated seat, I muttered “You gotta be f@cking kidding me.” The theater was otherwise empty as it was nearly twenty minutes until the next showing. First I tried to sit in it with the arm down and, being a very large man, one buttcheek got caught, leaving my ass at a 45-degree angle. That wouldn’t do. Next, I tried again with the armrest up. No 45-degree angle this time but you were still partially sitting on a hump with a pitiable small space left for some poor sap if they reserved the seat right next me.
It was at this point, completely frustrated, I contemplated going back to the ticket line and purchasing the second seat next to mine to make sure that didn’t happen -- I mean, I don’t like to get that intimate with a complete stranger, which isn’t really fair to them or me but it’s what you gotta do to fit in a world not built for your specs. And for a minute, as I envisioned the whole multiplex made over this way, I got really angry at this ruination and was almost ready to just chuck the whole thing, demand a refund for the second and third feature and go home. But I decided to wait it out and, if someone did wind up beside me I would apologize for the inconvenience and move to another empty lounger -- if they’d let me. (I lucked out as only four more people showed up for the second screening.) Again, yay, reserved seating. I mean, what happens if you get stuck by some obnoxious asshole? Or some fat-ass like me taking up a third of your seat? Or some tweener who can’t separate themselves from their cellphones. Or a rowdy family of six? Before, you could just move to another empty seat. Now, you might hesitate since that seat might belong to someone else, too. Madness. I also gave a morbid chuckle when the Marcus Theaters’ CEO came on screen and welcomed the audience to his theater and encouraged everyone to go for the large popcorn. Not with these limiting seats, buddy. Forget it.
And so, feeling bluer by the minute, I dragged myself toward the next theater and the final feature for the day. Again, I thought about buying the extra ticket but the small crowds of the first two features found me deciding to risk it again. And besides that, screw them. Why should I have to pay for a second seat due to your ill-conceived remodel. And another thing about these damnable Dreamloungers. Why put the controls on the inside of the armrest where the slightest contact from your thigh causes them to engage, either flopping you forward or backward as they recline and retract with no warning? Yeah, screw this noise, I thought. I am never coming back here again. Ever.
Regrettably, then, I was in a pretty foul mood when I carefully settled in for the third and final feature, The Lost of City of Z (2016), as best I could, which I was going into kinda cold, sold on the recommendation of a friend (-- thanks, Dave), who loved the source novel by David Grann, and beyond that really having no idea what I was about to see as my Dreamlounger reclined and retracted on its own through the whole damned movie at the minutest of shifting. (Never. Ever. Again.)
Turns out the film was good. Damned good. Real damned good. How good? I didn’t think about the infernal contraption I was sitting on for nearly two hours and twenty minutes, that’s how good it was as the film spun the true story of famed British explorer, Col. Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam), who first journeys into the Amazon with his trusted Corporals, Henry Costin and Arthur Manley (Robert Pattinson, Edward Ashley) to survey and find the source of a river to settle a border dispute between Bolivia and Brazil at the behest of the National Geographic Society in 1906. There, deep in the jungle, Fawcett finds evidence and the remains of an ancient advanced civilization but when he brings his tale back to Britain he is met with scorn and ridicule and prejudice by the scientific establishment “who regard all indigenous populations as mere savages” and therefore completely incapable of building what he described. (The Incan city of Machu Picchu wasn’t 'rediscovered’ until 1911.)
Undaunted, Fawcett mounts a second expedition into the Amazon to bring back even more proof of what he refers to as the Lost City of Zed (Z). This, however, ends in both disaster and failure. Then, his ambitions are seemingly sidelined permanently after suffering injuries during a gas attack fighting in the trenches of World War I. All the while, Fawcett’s wife, Nina (Sienna Miller), has stood by his side -- mostly metaphorically as her husband spent years away from home on his adventures, leaving her to raise their three children on her own. His constant absence also estranges the father from eldest son, Jack (Tom Holland). But this is eventually reconciled, and together, father and son decide to go on one last adventure into the jungle together to find Zed in 1925 only to never be heard from again. And like with the real-life Fawcett, the film ends rather ambiguously on whether the expedition was a success or failure.
Tearing into the history of this film a bit shows it went through several casting changes before settling on Charlie Hunnam for the lead, replacing both Brad Pitt and Benedict Cumberbatch, but he acquits himself rather well and carries the epic scope of this film with ease. I did not recognize Robert Pattison at all, nor Tom Holland until the very end. And while this film felt like a bit of a throwback to the works of David Lean and the early films of Werner Herzog -- especially Aguire, the Wrath of God (1972), the biggest impression I took away from the film was how much the level, even-handed portrayal of the natives in The Lost City of Z was a raised middle finger to the likes of Ruggero Deodato and Umberto Lenzi and their exploitative cannibal atrocity movies. Cannot recommend this one enough.
Heck, I can honestly highly recommend all three films I partook in for this triple-feature. As for the venue, well, I’m still kinda bitter and think I have time for one more dig on the Dreamlounger before wrapping this up, specifically the very loud snoring from one of my fellow patrons reclined-up and sacked-out two rows up during the last film. Yay. Going to the movies is fun. Well. It used to be. *sigh*
