The Lost City of Z is a film released in 2016 starring Charlie Hunnam, that is supposedly based on the real life story of Percy Fawcett, billed by the promoters as one of ‘Britain’s Greatest Explorers’. But for John Hemming, a man with much experience of visiting the Amazon peoples, this could not be further from the truth. He claims in a Spectator article that in reality Fawcett was ‘a nutter, a racist, and so incompetent that the only expedition he organised was a five week disaster.’
The film (and book by David Grann upon which it is based) seems to have taken a more sympathetic view of the man and his adventures, focusing, as expected, on the venture he became famous for – the search for the City of Z of the title. But how did the surveyer become obsessed with the search that would ultimately be his downfall? And can we perhaps tell a story that steers away from fantasy?
Since Europeans first arrived in the New World, there have been stories of a legendary jungle city of gold, sometimes referred to as El Dorado. Spanish Conquistador, Francisco de Orellana was the first to venture along the Rio Negro in search of this fabled city. In 1925, at the age of 58, explorer Percy Fawcett headed into the jungles of Brazil to find a mysterious lost city he called “Z”. He and his team would vanish without a trace and the story would turn out be one of the biggest news stories of his day. Despite countless rescue missions, Fawcett was never found. Was he killed by Amazonian tribesmen? And is there any factual basis for his Lost City of Z?