LEE - Mark Reviews Movies

Lee, Roadside Attractions / Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 26, 2024

Movie biographies often try to cover the span of a person's life, without actually digging into the character of the subject. That's somewhat the case with Lee, director Ellen Kuras' biographical account of the life and career of photographer Lee Miller, whose work as woman photojournalist during World War II was revolutionary for the time. The extent of her coverage of the war, though, only became really known after her death in 1977 for a number of factors—key among them that the world wasn't prepared to reckon with the horrors of the war in its immediate aftermath and Miller's own private nature.

What's most intriguing about Kuras' movie, then, is that does eventually get at that element of Miller's character, as well as others, by way of depicting her doing her work. The second half or so of this story is devoted exclusively to Miller's time during the war, first photographing the impact of the German Blitz on London, before finding a way to the front lines of Nazi-occupied France and, with the end of the war, into Germany. Some of those photos following Germany's defeat, including a fairly notorious one in a bathroom in a particular Munich apartment, would be too controversial and/or horrifying for government officials in the United Kingdom to allow to be published.

There is, of course, a lot more to Miller's life than what's presented by Liz Hannah, Marion Hume, and John Collee's screenplay (adapted from a biography by Anthony Penrose, whose connection to Miller probably shouldn't be mentioned because of one sneaky part of the narrative). The filmmakers have decided, though, that this period of her life is the most defining and telling, and they are, perhaps, right in that thinking. When the movie eventually gets into the character's determination to find the truth and resilience to capture that truth on film, it is compelling.

The narrative also stumbles quite a bit, especially at the beginning and in a framing device that doesn't add too much to what we actually see during the straightforward biography. In those framing scenes, an older Lee (Kate Winslet) is being interviewed by a journalist (played by Josh O'Connor) in the late 1970s at her home in the English countryside. From the get-go, she reveals herself to be curt, impatient with nonsense, and rather skeptical of why anyone would be interested in her photography career, but she humors the man anyway.

Most of the introduction to the story, by way of flashbacks to Lee's pre-war life in France and London, sort of meanders and seems to focus on the parts of her life that are ancillary to the real core of the narrative. Coming to the end of her career as a model, Lee spends time with her artist friends at a lavish estate in France, where they speak dismissively of Germany's new leader, and meets Roland (Alexander Skarsgård), a handsome art dealer who dabbles in painting in his free time. The two connect instantly, and when it's time for him to return to London, she agrees to join him.

It's strange how little these various relationships actually matter to the story, except to highlight Lee putting her passion for her job over personal matters and her personal connection to how the German occupation of France affected the country. Such details feel redundant, especially since Kuras and Winslet make Lee's devotion to the work and the effect of war on her palpable, simply by showing it.

During the Blitz, she focuses on faces and ordinary people, especially women, doing their part in the defense of London. Getting a job at Vogue magazine under editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough), Lee's photographs serve the war effort and occasionally cause a stir with the censors. When Roland is sent off to help develop camouflage techniques for the military, she decides to use her U.S. citizenship to become embedded at the front lines.

From here, the material finds its footing, as Lee photographs injured soldiers, combat in the streets, the treatment of suspected collaborators by the French Resistance, and increasingly unsettling sights as the full extent of the Nazis' actions are left bare by their defeat. Often accompanying her is American photographer David Scherman (Andy Samberg, showing promise outside of his usually comedic roles), who understands what Lee does and why she does it but doesn't always comprehend the lengths to which she'll go for the job.

One has to admire these sections of the movie, which intrinsically know that to understand Lee is to witness how she works, as well as those extremes—running toward gunfire and explosions, snapping shots that she knows will result in controversy, sneaking into that Munich apartment and staging a righteous desecration of a private space. The movie doesn't need to explain these things, either about the work or Lee's manner of doing it, because it's wise enough to just show it.

Unfortunately, there's the flip side of Lee, which does feel compelled to explain by way of the framing device and those mostly extraneous moments marrying her personal life to her work. The far more interesting and relevant marriage here is that of Miller's visual medium with the visual storytelling of this biography. When the movie achieves that, it gets at the heart of the character and her work, but it's too uneven otherwise to fully invest in that conceit.

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