"The Lost City of Z" (2017)

I’ve long been a fan of the Era of Exploration. I remember reading “The Voyage of the Beagle” as a kid and John Wesley Powell in college. I wanted to be a character in a Willard Price book. So, I looked forward to “The Lost City of Z” from the moment I saw the trailer.

It is an amazingly beautiful film. And it is a compelling story. But it is so for much more than the push into the unknown. The story of Percy Fawcett is incredibly tragic.

Early on we see he is a man driven to redeem some sense of honor—even though he is one of the most accomplished men in his position—because his father had been an absentee, shameful drunk. He is denied a position in proper society because of this, and even though he thinks he will win respect on the battlefield, he is given a chance through science and exploration.

The problem is that he then proceeds to chase honor at the expense of being a father to his children. He becomes the very absentee father he was raised by in many senses.

And once he does manage to make a connection with one of his sons, once he is already an adult, he does so by leading that child on what has become a wild goose chase (even though the film tries to claim that he was ultimately justified decades later—but that is questionable), to their deaths.

In some sense this is a cautionary tale of the danger of the enticing beauty of the unknown.