Lee

Greetings again from the darkness. Being courageous and heroic doesn't mean one must wear a cape and possess super powers. In fact, some of the most courageous folks use their words (spoken and written), their feet (for marching into battle), and as we learn here, even their eyes. Lee Miller is a famous photojournalist who used her words to get to the front lines of WWII, her feet to march with soldiers, and her eyes to decide where to focus her camera. The film is based on the biography, "The Lives of Lee Miller", by her son Antony Penrose. It's directed by renowned choreographer Ellen Kuras (her feature film directorial debut) and co-written by Liz Hannah, Marion Hume, John Collee, and Lem Dobbs.

Oscar winner Kate Winslet stars as Lee Miller, and her fierce and committed performance validates what a passion project this was for her, and just how hard she worked to bring the project to fruition. Lee Miller was a well-known fashion model, and we see her hanging out with her band of artistic friends in pre-war France. It's here where she first meets Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgard), and their initial intellectual bantering leads right to the bedroom. This after we hear Ms. Miller proclaim that she had ever only been good at drinking, having sex, and taking pictures. She speaks this line in 1977 while being interviewed (by Josh O'Connor, CHALLENGERS, 2024) about her life. It's this interview that provides some structure to the film, while confirming that drinking and smoking were hobbies until the end.

It's really Lee's photographs that guide us through each phase. She and Roland relocate to London during the war, and soon enough she's taking pictures under the guidance of British Vogue editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough). Continually having to stand up for herself after being rebuked for being a woman doing a man's job, Lee partners with (and ultimately befriends) Life magazine photographer David E Scherman (a surprisingly effective Andy Samberg). Their work documenting history becomes historic in itself. After hearing about the "missing", they were the first journalists to document Dachau concentration camp and the tragic prisoner trains.

Although British Vogue refused to publish the photographs as being too "disturbing", the U. S. magazine did publish, creating awareness of the atrocities. The segment that leads to the infamous photo of Lee bathing in Hitler's tubs is handled expertly. If there is a flaw in the film, it's that we never really get to know Lee's friends, so as she re-connects with Solange (Oscar winner Marion Cotillard), their meeting doesn't hit as hard as it should. Still, the cinematography from Pawel Edelman and the accomplished performance by Kate Winslet, do justice to the stunning (actual) photographs shown. There is a dramatized twist near the film's end that pays homage to Lee and her story. An early comment about Hitler is all too relevant today, and the battle scenes and photographs reinforce what courage Lee Miller exhibited.

Opens in theaters on September 27, 2024.

Giving this an 7.5/10 rating

A very and honest as you can get biopic drama of Lee Miller, famous photographer from the 1930's and through out the second world war, showed the world the horrors in the world during her time. Played by, Kate Winslet, this is very much her film, and rightly so. Again, more fine work from an actor who still can pull your attention and works hard at it. Alexander Skarsgård and Andy Samberg are the backup who just as superb in this really near top notch movie.

Ellen Kuras directs us through pretty much a hellish world with touches of light and happiness, which are few, and proper, given the subject matter, and it is eerily lovely looking and tough too. Writers Liz Hannah, Marion Hume and John Collee give us a solid script and story, given how nasty the world was in, as Andrea Riseborough and Marion Cotillard also, pull out the stops in the acting, and look real rough, only Josh O'Connor is the clean person here.

The film could of been a bit more edger and stronger, but then it would of been very graphic and a higher rating, alienating more of he audience, who need to see this film. A good bit of cinema, and with what is out there, it shines and is never, never boring.

It's a partial biopic of photojournalist Lee Miller (Kate Winslet) set in 1977 with flashbacks to 1938-1945. The film frames its story as an interview of Miller by a young man (Josh O'Connor) in 1977. Sequential flashbacks to Miller's life begin in 1938 and then follow.

Miller is a former American model who has taken up photography as an artistic form and hangs out with an artsy crowd in France, where she has lived for a time. Among her friends are Jean (Patrick Mille) and Solange d'Ayen. She meets Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgard), a Quaker artist and poet in Great Britain. He is also part of her artistic community and they begin a relationship. Miller moves to London, where she secures a job with the British Vogue magazine edited by Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough).

After World War II begins, Miller finds her way to the front lines as a war photojournalist for Vogue. "Lee" depicts some of her dramatic experiences, which resulted in memorable photographs from battles, the capture of Berlin, and the death camps, often together with a Life magazine photographer, David Scherman (Andy Samberg). Miller's personality throughout is hard-driven and sometimes impulsive as she copes through chain-smoking and alcohol consumption. At the film's end, we learn more about her motivation.

"Lee" is too one-dimensional, though Kate Winslet's strong performance reflects a complex and troubled personality. There are too many characters with shallow development, leaving Winslet on her own. The lack of context also detracts, as her past is vaguely referenced (she was married to an unmentioned man throughout the war), and we learn nothing of her life after the war (she did marry Roland). Thus, "Lee's" limitations derive from how an array of screenwriters made the adaptations from the 1985 biography.

I've seen a few review that seem quite dismissive about the scope and importance of Lee. But if you know about the limited freedom of women during this time period you will totally appreciate the audacity and productivity delivered here. Lee was spurned on by personal trauma to do good with her hard fought freedom to operate in a man's world.

Lee has all the period clothing and historical accuracy which is no small feat, while showing the sheer determination it took to achieve access to the final Nazi front of WW2. People back home in the US didn't believe exactly the horrors and certainly not the numbers of the Holocaust. It was the undeniable courageous journey by Lee which brought back the unmistakeable proof and witness of an evil place in history

Knowing that one can't unsee certain such things in person gives one empathy for the cost of doing photo journalism. Many get martyred while doing their work when jailed or taken hostage in authoritarian regimes. But in this case, to have survived seems as permanently affecting a way to finish such an important task.

Kate Winslet turns in quite an effective performance here as the eponymous photographer who originally arrived in London to be with husband Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård) and to work for the formidable Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough) at "Vogue" magazine as a fashion photographer. With the rise of the Nazis seemingly unstoppable throughout continental Europe, Penrose spends more time on the war effort leaving her more and more determined to prove that she is every bit as capable as her male counterparts. Needless to say there's quite a bit of resistance to her participation in combat zones, but thanks to her own perseverance and an alliance with David Scherman (Andy Samberg) she is soon actively involved in wartime photography and by the end is visiting some of the most ghastly sites ever built seeing, at first hand, the truly stomach-churning atrocities left behind by a now defeated war machine that turned large-scale annihilation into an art form. Her story is being relayed from the comfort of her British home in the 1960s to a man whom we assume is just a journalist. Indeed his obvious nervousness and her antipathetic attitude towards him and his task seems to suggest she sees no value in her memories, but as we develop the threads of her life, we begin to sense that something more exists between her and this young man (Josh O'Connor) which quite neatly puts quite a lot of perspective on the choices made by a woman who probably did put career first. Through the characters of Solange (Marion Cotillard) and Nusch (Noémie Merlant) the film also attempts to put a little meat on the bones of the story of those who had to "co-operate" with their new overlords. Some willingly, some less-so and some, well they didn't live to tell. The production and battle scenarios aren't really so effective - maybe just bit too manicured, the script is a little dry and there's maybe just a bit too much of it, but Winslet shows here that she has plenty of capacity to take on a role that it would have been easy to shower with bravado, but instead she brings a more considered charisma to her portrayal of a woman whose bloody-minded courage provided for some of the most significant imagery of the Second World War. Imagery that even now makes your flesh crawl.