Lee | Dir: Ellen Kuras | ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
I didn’t know who Lee Miller was but I realised that I knew the iconic images she captured very well. This is really an overdue biopic of the courageous Lee Miller (brilliantly portrayed by Kate Winslet) who was fighting her own wars as WWII raged through Europe, and she proved that the camera was one of the most powerful weapons.
The film recreates what it took to show the world startling images that needed to be seen. Not only did she have to battle because of her gender, she carried a huge burden to reveal the truth … as was revealed in the final powerful and memorable scenes of the film.
A chain-smoking, whiskey drinking older Lee Miller is being interviewed by an unnamed young journalist (Josh O’Connor). The reporter looks at the photographs of her as a New York fashion model living in Paris and partying with Pablo Picasso and surrealist art photographer Man Ray.
It is here that Miller meets artist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgard), moves to London and becomes Vogue Magazine’s World War II correspondent and photographer. While capturing the devastation of a bombed London, Miller meets Life Magazine photographer David Sherman (Andy Samberg) who would stay with her for the duration of the war.
Battling patriarchy to capture heart-breaking images from the front line in France and later on the streets of liberated France, Miller, whose actual photographs are used in the film, shows the importance of journalism to bear witness to atrocities, and record and expose terrible truths.
As someone in the film says, “The only sane response to tyranny is to create.” Armed with a camera and not a gun, Miller was one of the first people to let the world know about the horrific truth of Nazi concentration camps.
After the war, all Miller wanted to do was forget the horrors she had captured, and it was not until 36 years after her death that her son, Anthony Penrose, uncovered 80,000 negatives of his mother’s work in an attic. Now the world can remember the images and the name.
Lezly Herbert
