In 2014, James Gray’s The Immigrant was met with great reviews, but it had all the impact of somebody farting into a canyon for how the Weinsteins ended up releasing it (I was one of a very lucky few who actually got to see the thing in theaters). That was too bad, because it one of that year’s finest films, and it was certainly blessed with that year’s finest cinematography, courtesy of Darius Khondji (he also shot the film with that year’s second-finest cinematography, Magic in the Moonlight, ’cause why not). I was so impressed by Khondji’s work there that when I heard that Gray’s next project would be a long-in-the-works adaptation of David Grann’s The Lost City of Z (about an explorer who disappears looking for a mythic city in the Amazon), I petitioned really hard for Khondji to shoot it. You can read about that here, but god only knows why you would. Anyway, Khondji got the job, and now finally we have the first (sales) trailer for The Lost City of Z. At first it was Vimeo, but it was cruelly locked before I could watch it there (at least a Robert Pattinson fansite was there to support me at first, with extensive screenshots of the trailer). But thankfully, enterprising YouTube user Nelly Tamrazyan was able to upload it to YouTube, and here it is.

Well, I need a change of pants. Getting the boring stuff out of the way first, this does look very good (although I imagine this trailer was blanded down, considering its intent is to get the movie distributors). Given how small Gray’s other films have been (focusing on one time, one location, and generally one family/group), it’s interesting to see him making something this expansive, going from the battlefields of World War I to England to Bolivia. It’s also interesting to see him working entirely without any of his troupe of previously-used actors, with Joaquin Phoenix’s absence (the first time he’s missed a Gray film since his debut, Little Odessa) being the most glaring. In his place is Charlie Hunnam, and, well, he didn’t put to sleep during any of the three minutes of the trailer, so that’s a big accomplishment for him. I’ll have to wait until the film comes out to get a good read on his performance, but given Gray’s magic touch with actors (it’s not like Gwyneth Paltrow gives a performance on the level of hers in Two Lovers in every movie she does), I’m not too worried. And it’s nice to see Bearded Character Actor Robert Pattinson show up, so there’s that too.

Okay, I got through that, let’s get to the good stuff. Jesus fuck in Heaven, this movie looks gorgeous. I correctly called that the vegetation of the Amazon would look gorgeous under Khondji’s lens, because lordy, it does (the header shot *drools*). But I wasn’t quite expecting the number of shots containing Khondji’s other big signature as an artist, those inky, pure blacks, in the space of three minutes. Some of the shots, with their pseudo-sepia tones surrounded by Gordon Willisian darkness, could’ve been put in The Immigrant and no one would notice. And how about those WWI scenes, which appear to emulate the bizarre color scheme of Vittorio Storaro’s work on Apocalypse Now (which Gray is an avowed fan of)? This is entirely too much Khondji goodness to be fit into such a small timeframe. I can only dream at night about what the whole film looks like, and I’ll likely have to dream for a little while longer, considering the earliest some rumblings have pegged as a release date is sometime during the fall. At least it’s being released by Paramount and not those goddamn Weinstein fucks again, and it won’t get buried if Gray refuses to shoot an ending where Hunnam returns from the Amazon or whatever.