Producers: Kate Solomon, Kate Winslet, Troy Lum, Andrew Mason, Marie Savare and Lauren Hantz Director: Ellen Kuras Screenplay: Liz Hannah, John Collee and Marion Hume Cast: Kate Winslet, Josh O’Connor, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard, Noémie Merlant, Vincent Colombe, Patrick Mille, Zita Hanrot, Arinzé Kene, Samuel Barnett, James Murray and Enrique Arce Distributor: Roadside Attractions/Vertical
Grade: C+
American-born Lee Miller (1907-1977) was an incredibly accomplished woman who broke the gender barriers of her time to become one of the most significant battlefield photographers of World War II, responsible for some of the most influential visual evidence of the horrors of the Final Solution. First winning fame as a model in her twenties, she turned to photography, becoming the collaborator of Man Ray in Paris in the early thirties and then, with the outbreak of war, becoming a war photojournalist. Often working in tandem with Life correspondent David Scherman, she documented the progress of Allied troop movement through western Europe and conditions in liberated Nazi concentration camps.
Ellen Kuras’ interesting but rather prosaic film, with a screenplay based on the 1985 book “The Lives of Lee Miller” by Lee’s son Antony Penrose, is structured in interview format, with the elderly, irascible Miller (Kate Winslet) being questioned by a young man (Josh O’Connor) whose identity is revealed only toward the close. As they converse—there are frequent inserts of their Q&A (often contentious, as Miller can be brusque and dismissive), a technique that frankly hobbles the sense of urgency—flashbacks tell her story in chronological sequence, beginning in the late 1930s. (Her life prior to that time, fascinating in itself, is virtually ignored.)
By then she’d become a cynical celebrity gadabout, no longer either modeling or engaged in much arty photography. She’s introduced frolicking with friends in coastal France; the entourage includes such luminaries as poet Paul Éluard (Vincent Colombe) and his wife Nusch (Noémie Merlant), an actress and model; Solange d’Ayen (Marion Cotillard), fashion editor of French Vogue, and her husband Jean (Patrick Mille), the Duke of Ayen; actress and model Ady Fidelin (Zita Hanrot); and Pablo Picasso (Enrique Arce). Much of the discourse revolves around the rise of Hitler, whether he’s a terrible danger or merely a passing aberration.
British artist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård) joins the group and after some initial sparring he and Lee grow close. Cut to a couple of years later: they’re married and living in London with an infant son. England is in the war, the Blitz has begun, Roland is involved in camouflage design for the military, and Lee seeks a job with British Vogue’s editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough) as fashion expert Cecil Beaton (Samuel Barnett), depicted as a prissily contemptuous onlooker, looks on disparagingly.
Miller began by documenting the impact of the German bombing of England. She then circumvented the British ban on female correspondents across the channel by securing certification from the American branch of the magazine. She then went on to cover post-D-Day action on the continent, finding her way into combat zones despite prohibitions to the contrary and, often in collaboration with Scherman (Andy Samberg, doing nicely against type), with whom she built a relationship that seems to have been somewhat more than professional, photographed women involved in work supporting the troops, wounded men in hospitals and, finally, actual fighting, including the early use of napalm.
As the Allied movement eastward continued, her subjects increasingly focused on very specific subjects. The treatment of French women by fellow-citizens who denounced them as having collaborated with Nazi occupiers by giving them sexual favors is one. But even more important was her work in disclosing the true nature of the Final solution; she and Scherman photographed trains that carried victims to the camps, and conditions in liberated ones like Dachau. They scored what became their most celebrated shot when Scherman photographed Miller bathing in Hitler’s bathtub in his Munich apartment on the very day when the Fuhrer and Eva Braun were committing suicide in the Berlin bunker.
Miller was also able to reconnect with some of the French friends she was shown visiting with before the outbreak of war; hearing what they’d endured, and whom they’d lost, proves a shattering experience for her—as does her coming upon an American GI trying to force himself on a young woman, an attempt she angrily breaks up. The period portion of the film closes with Miller’s return to London and her exasperation with reluctance to publish her photos proving the extent of German cruelty during the war.
Winslet, who was instrumental in producing the film (once, it’s reported, paying cast and crew herself when financing temporarily dried up), gives a very good performance in the title role, capturing the wartime Miller’s intensity and sharpness of mind and tongue. She’s also convincing in the interview segments when, looking properly aged, she spars with drab O’Connor’s interviewer. Much more personable are the chipper Riseborough and Samberg, who brings a touching moodiness to Scherman. Like O’Connor, Skarsgård is prim and forgettable, but Cotillard and Merlant each have a few affecting moments in the latter going.
Shot in Hungary and Croatia as well as the UK, “Lee” is not an opulent work as far as war films go; one can feel the constraints of a limited budget particularly in the battlefield scenes, though everywhere one notes the modesty of the visuals. Still, Gemma Jackson’s production design and Michael O’Connor’s costumes convey a reasonably good sense of time and place, and Pawel Edelman’s cinematography is commendably unfussy. One can imagine sharper editing than that of Mikkel E.G. Nielsen, though the necessity of jumping from the interview segments to the flashbacks would have been daunting for anyone; but Alexandre Desplat’s score, while perfectly fine, is not one of his more memorable.
A similar criticism can be leveled at the film as a whole. Though a committed tribute to an extraordinary woman, and bolstered by a strong lead performance, “Lee” comes across as more earnest than inspired, a less powerful portrait than it might have been.