Susan Granger’s review of “Lee” (Roadside Attractions)
Kate Winslet devoted nearly a decade to bringing her passion project “Lee,” the story of Lee Miller, a hedonistic high-fashion-model-turned-war correspondent, to the screen – for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.
“So many people don’t know who Lee Miller was, have never heard of her, yet will have looked at the images she took that informed them in some way about what happened during World War II,” Winslet notes. “She was an American woman who went to war to document the truth and to bear witness to Nazi atrocities.”
After Miller’s ‘accidental’ son, Antony Penrose, gave her complete access to his estranged mother’s archive, Winslet developed the script with Liz Hannah, Marion Hume & John Collee, chose cinematographer Ellen Duras as director, and bankrolled the film herself when necessary.
Using the framing device of being ‘interviewed,’ Miller’s story begins in 1937 in the south of France, where – realizing that her modelling days were numbered – she turned to photography, became the audacious, bare-breasted muse of Dada artist Man Ray and eventually married British Surrealist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgard), who recruited artists for a ‘camouflage’ unit.
When Hitler’s forces invaded France, Miller moved to London, where she convinced British Vogue editor Audrey Winters (Andrea Riseborough) to use the ‘solarized’ pictures she took with her Rolleiflex and dispatched from the war zone, often working with Life photojournalist David Scherman (Andy Samberg).
(Solarization is a process in which the background of a portrait is overexposed to outline the head with a black shadow.)
They arrived at Buchenwald in General Patton’s wake and were among the first to document the depravity at Dachau. In Munich, they wrangled entrance to Hitler’s private apartment on the Prinzregentenplatz, where Scherman photographed Miller nude the Fuhrer’s bathtub.
Problem is: the episodic narrative thread tends to be awkward and confusing – glossing over or omitting salient details about Miller’s alcoholism, chain-smoking, promiscuous sexuality, insatiable desire for excitement, and bohemian fondness for macabre visual images.
Yet Kate Winslet’s nuanced performance is arresting and compelling, particularly when she focuses on Lee Miller’s fear of fascism.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Lee” is a poignant, visually searing 6, streaming on Apple TV+, Amazon Prime and Hulu.
