Review: The Lost City of Z (2017)

* * * 1/2
Director: James Gray
Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller

To obsess over something for years, to work so hard, to be so close and find that it is just beyond your reach - it would be enough to drive a person mad. The Lost City of Z, based on the non-fiction book of the same name by David Grann and centering on Percy Fawcett's search for a lost civilization in the Amazon jungle, does not treat Fawcett as though it thinks he was mad for continuously returning to the jungle, but makes a fairly compelling case for how he might have been driven mad by everything outside of the jungle. The film features touches that are reminiscent of such films as Apocalypse Now, Fitzcarraldo, and, especially, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, all films that know madness well, and reunites writer/director James Gray with cinematographer Darius Khondji after 2014's The Immigrant. Mesmerizing and often soulful, The Lost City of Z is a beautiful and bewitching story about one man's unconquerable desire to know the unknown.

Review: We Own the Night (2007)

* * 1/2
Director: James Gray
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendez, Robert Duvall

Writer/director James Gray's We Own the Night is an utterly gorgeous film to look at and when it works, it both looks and feels like a masterpiece. Unfortunately it doesn't work the whole way through. The first third is solid, near perfect. As the story goes on, though, it starts to lose something, be it focus or purpose or energy - it's hard to articulate exactly what happens, but the film starts to become more muted at precisely the moment when it needs to ratchet things up. It is, throughout, beautiful to look at - Gray, who here collaborates with cinematographer Joaquin Baca-Asay (who also photographed Gray's 2008 film Two Lovers), is one of the most painterly directors working right now - but looking great can only take a film so far, even if it's also built around a wonderful leading performance.

Review: The Immigrant (2014)

* * * *
Director: James Gray
Starring: Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Renner

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
            - "The New Colossus" - Emma Lazarus

The immigrant story is one of two competing narratives. One is a story of hope and opportunity, the other is a story of hardship, marginalization and, in some cases, exploitation, both framed by another set of competing narratives, one in which immigrants are desired for their contributions to the growth of a nation, and one in which they are villified and characterized as leeching off the strength of a nation that they did not help to build up. James Gray's The Immigrant functions in both modes of the immigrant story, beginning and ending in hope, but bridged by a prolonged period of despair and pain. It is a thematically rich and visually stunning work anchored by great performances from Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix, and Jeremy Renner. No wonder its distributor (The Weinstein Company strikes again) has essentially abandoned it in release.