This biopic omits several important aspects of Lee Miller’s life
Kate Winslet is commanding as Lee Miller, the fashion model turned war photographer. But Alexander Skarsgard is miscast as her husband, and there are elements missing.
“Write your own obit and send it to your editor before you leave,’’ an army officer advises American photojournalist Lee Miller as she prepares to head to the front-lines of World War II. He adds a pre-obituary is “standard procedure”.
His advice goes to one of the themes of the biographical drama Lee, starring the ever remarkable Kate Winslet in the titular role. Miller, who started life as a fashion model, realises her “tits and ass” reputation is a barrier when it comes to covering combat zones. No women allowed in no-man’s land.
She circumvents that – circumvention being another of her talents – and reports the war from the London Blitz to the liberation of Paris to, more harrowingly, what she sees and photographs in German concentration camps once the war is over.
“Even when I wanted to look away, I knew I couldn’t,’’ she says. And “once you’ve seen it, you can never unsee it”.
This film is the directorial debut of American cinematographer Ellen Kuras, who shot the 2004 drama Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The script is by Liz Hannah, John Collee and Marion Hume, adapted from the 1985 biography The Lives of Lee Miller, by Miller’s son Antony Penrose.
The framing device is Miller at home in England in 1977, the year of her death at age 70, being interviewed by a writer. She drinks and smokes and tells her interviewer she did not go to war “so people would know my name”.
Nevertheless, she tells her stories, which we see in flashbacks. Winslet is commanding, such as when she confronts her editor at Vogue magazine about her concentration camp photographs not being included in the latest edition. She’s told “the ministry” thinks people have seen enough horror and need to “move on”.
“The little girl raped and beaten in a death camp,’’ Miller replies. “How will she move on?”
Miller’s husband, Roland Penrose (a miscast Alexander Skarsgard), is an art gallery owner and artist who is tasked with creating combat camouflage. “I’m designing tanks to look like ice cream kiosks,’’ he admits.
The other main characters include Miller’s French journalist friend Solange d’Ayen (Marion Cotillard) and her American photojournalist colleague David Scherman (Andy Samberg), who took the famous photo of Miller soaking in Adolf Hitler’s bathtub. The name of the man interviewing 70-year-old Miller is not revealed but we come to know who he is.
There’s a telling moment where she tells him it’s her turn to pose a question and asks him about his mother.
It’s here, and also when Miller speaks of her own childhood, that another theme is touched on: “There are different kinds of wounds,’’ Miller says. “Not just the ones you can see.”
This is a conventional biopic – it omits some aspects of Miller’s life, such as her serious depression and MI5 investigating whether she was a Soviet spy – that is lifted by Winslet’s performance.
“You’re making a big deal about nothing,’’ Miller tells her interviewer. “They’re just pictures.” I doubt she, or anyone who saw her work, believed that.
Lee (M)
127 minutes
In cinemas
★★★
