LEE : Monday 28th October 2024

I saw the M Rated 'LEE' earlier this week, and this British biographical drama film is Directed by Ellen Kuras in her feature film making debut, and is based on the 1985 biography 'The Lives of Lee Miller' written by Antony Penrose. It saw its World Premiere showcasing at the Toronto International Film Festival in early September 2023, was released in the UK in mid-September this year, in the US at the end of September, has so far grossed US$15.5M and has garnered generally positive reviews. The film was a passion project for lead Actress and Co-Producer Kate Winslet, who started developing the film, and in October 2015, the project was officially announced with Ellen Kuras on board to Direct from mid-2020.

The film opens up during the late 1930's, as Hitler rises to power in Germany. Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller (Kate Winslet) leaves her artistic circle of friends and life behind in France, including Solange d'Ayen (Marion Cotillard), Paul Eluard (Vincent Colombe) and Nusch Eluard (Noemie Merlant), and travels to London after falling madly, and very quickly, in love with the artist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgard), to whom she describes herself as being done 'living a life as the model, the muse, the ingenue, and only good at drinking, having sex, and taking pictures'.

The two embark on a passionate relationship, just as war breaks out in Europe. Already a well regarded photographer, Lee lands a job completing assignments for British Vogue magazine, where she takes photographs of the London Blitz by bringing the chaos and urgency of those air raids to the pages of a popular and well regarded fashion publication. However, she is shocked by the restrictions placed on female photographers, and the attitude of Cecil Beaton (Samuel Barnett) a British fashion, portrait and war photographer also working for British Vogue magazine at the same time. 

As Hitler’s regime takes over large swathes of Europe, Lee becomes increasingly frustrated that her work is constrained by rules dictated by men. Determined to be where the action is, she defiantly pushes back against the establishment and, with the blessing of her friend and Vogue Editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough), Lee overcomes enormous obstacles to get herself to the frontline of World War II, by using the excuse that as an American citizen she is not governed by stuffy British rules about what women should and shouldn't do. 

And so sent over to Normandy following the D-Day invasion of 1944, Miller was tasked with reporting on what she was told was the newly-liberated town of Saint-Malo. She traveled there only to find that the town was still being heavily fought over. Miller's military accreditation as a female war correspondent did not allow her to enter an active combat zone, but rather than leave she decided to stay, and spent five days on the front lines photographing as much of the Battle of Saint-Malo as she could. Her photographs included the first recorded use of napalm. 

Compelled to document the truth, she turns her lens in the direction of suffering, and slowly begins to reveal the horrific loss of life due to Hitler’s diabolical crimes against the innocent victims of his regime. Miller teamed up with American photojournalist David Scherman (Andy Samberg), a Life magazine correspondent, on many assignments, including the liberation of Paris, the Battle of Alsace, and the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau. 

Scherman's iconic photograph of Miller sitting in the bathtub in Adolf Hitler's private apartment in Munich, with the dried mud of that morning's visit to Dachau on her boots deliberately dirtying Hitler's bathmat was taken in the evening on 30th April 1945, coincidentally the same day that Hitler committed suicide with his wife Eva Braun in his bunker in Berlin. 

Upon returning to London after the end of the war, her husband returns home bearing the latest edition of Vogue magazine in which she expected to see her photographic account and accompanying article on the horrors of what she witnessed in Germany, but there are none. She hurries across to the Vogue offices to see Audrey Withers for an explanation but she is not there, and so tears through a filing cabinet seeking out the negatives of all the images she sent back, and promptly sets about ripping them up and cutting them up with scissors. Audrey appears and explains that she was not allowed to go to print with her images as they were way too graphic. Miller breaks down, and storms out. A short time later sat on the steps outside the Vogue offices Miller speaks of a profoundly traumatic experience when she was just seven years old when she was left home alone with an adult male friend of her family. She says that she has had to live with that shame, fear, and fury, for all of these years and has never told anyone as she was raised to keep secrets. 

Throughout the film we return to 1977 and Miller's home at Farley Farm House, in Chiddingly, East Sussex where she is being interviewed by Antony Penrose (Josh O'Connor) about her time as a WWII photojournalist and recounting the stories behind some of the most influential photographs of that era. Miller is somewhat distant of Penrose only opening up when he agrees to tell her something about his life. At the end Miller says it's your turn and it's then that we realise that Antony Penrose is in fact her son, who tells her that growing up she always was distant, disconnected from him, and almost an obstacle to her life. Miller remarks 'that's disappointing'. She pulls out a box containing a lock of his hair from his very first hair cut, the first book she ever read to him, and the first picture he ever painted. As the camera pulls away, Miller is not there, but spread all over the floor are Lee's photographs that Penrose only discovered after her mothers death in 1977, when he came across them in the attic of Farley Farm House by chance. 

Lee Miller carried out this dangerous work for the sake of the female readers of Vogue magazine, from whom the reality of war was largely kept hidden, and in the process yielded an indelible series of photographs which to this day continue to shape how we view these events.

'Lee' is a fairly detailed character study of this icon of WWII photojournalism that charts her story from the late 1930's through until just after the end of the war. It is at times harrowing, emotional, thought provoking and funny, and Kate Winslet shines in the role of the conflicted, yet thoroughly determined Lee Miller, and appears in almost every scene. Ellen Kuras as former Cinematographer turned Director has crafted a biopic of a woman you may not have previously heard of, but through this film her enduring legacy is granted a new life which she so rightly deserves. Alexander Skarsgard is miscast as Roland Penrose and his dialogue comes across as stilted and barely interested, and Josh O'Connor comes across as the floundering Prince Charles - the role he played in 'The Crown'. Andrea Riseborough, Marion Cotillard and Andy Samberg are all first rate in their roles. 

'Lee' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-