Movie Review: LEE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: September 27th, 2024 / 02:56 AM

LEE movie poster | ©2024 Roadside Attractions/Vertical

Rating: R
Stars: Kate Winslet, Alexander Skarsgård, Andy Samberg, Josh O’Connor, Andrea Riseborough, Marion Cotillard, Noémie Merlant, James Murray, Samuel Barnett, Vincente Colombi
Writers: Liz Hannah and Marion Hume & John Collee, story by Lem Dobbs and Marion Hume & John Collee, based on the biography by Antony Penrose
Director: Ellen Kuras
Distributor: Roadside Attractions/Vertical
Release Date: September 20, 2024

American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award winner Ellen Kuras makes her narrative feature directing debut (she was previously Oscar-nominated for producing the 2008 documentary THE BETRAYAL, which she co-directed) with the biopic LEE.

LEE centers on American combat photographer Lee Miller (played here by Kate Winslet), whose WWII photos opened the world’s eyes to the horrors of both European battlefields and Nazi concentration camps.

It’s easy enough to see the logic of having a celebrated cinematographer direct a film about a celebrated still photographer. Indeed, Kuras’s imagery is potent and pointed, rich and expressive. However, the screenplay – by Liz Hannah and Marion Hume & John Collee, story by Lem Dobbs and Marion Hume & John Collee, based on the biography by Antony Penrose – is sometimes less than the sum of its parts.

We meet Lee as an older woman in 1977 (in naturalistic age makeup designed by John Nolan), being interviewed in her cottage by a diffident young man (Josh O’Connor). Lee doesn’t seem particularly happy about this exchange, but eventually opens up.

In flashback to the ‘30s, we see Lee visiting with friends, including Solange D’Ayen (Marion Cotillard), Solange’s husband Jean (Patrick Mille), and Nusch (Noémie Merlant) and Paul Eluard (Vincente Colombi), in the French countryside. They urge Lee to return to Paris with them, but Lee isn’t sure what she wants to do next.

Then their group is joined by English art dealer/covert artist/aristocrat Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård). Lee and Roland fall for each other practically at first sight. Roland persuades Lee to return to England with him.

Lee applies to U.K. VOGUE magazine. She is soon befriended by editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough), and antagonized by fellow employee Cecil Beaton (Samuel Barnett).

Although her earlier life has not been especially socially conscious, Lee feels increasingly moved by the circumstances of ordinary people, taking telling photographs of small details of their lives.

When World War II breaks out, Lee wants to take photos of the front lines, to show people back home what is really happening. The British government forbids women to enter combat zones – but Lee is American, and the U.S. Army has no such restrictions.

Lee teams up with American war correspondent David E. Scherman (Andy Samberg). Neither of them is prepared for what they uncover.

Again, Kuras does an excellent job of showing us the sights and sounds of war, especially conveying how frightening it is to Lee and David, who don’t have military training.

But looking at the writing credits, it seems like everybody’s pieces weren’t made to fit together perfectly. The way the interview sequences are interspersed with Lee’s voiceovers and the flashback action leads to a small twist at the end, but it doesn’t have the intended effect.

In fact, sometimes the voiceovers verge on self-parody. After Lee has explained to several people why she feels compelled to go to the front and photograph the war, she muses on the soundtrack something to the effect that she could have gone home, after having already stated this repeatedly onscreen.

LEE also makes respectful use of Miller’s real, harrowing photographs of concentration camp victims, living and dead. To be clear, it is important that these pictures be seen today, so that modern audiences comprehend what can happen when a nation turns against its own citizens.

But then the film brings up a horrendous incident from Miller’s childhood. The story certainly belongs in LEE, as the trauma and its aftermath clearly shaped her life going forward.

However, it is placed in juxtaposition to the concentration camp. While what Miller suffered is terrible and worthy of our sympathy, it is flatly wrong to compare it to the Holocaust.

Perhaps inadvertently, LEE also seems to suggest that it takes having endured something personally ghastly to have empathy for the victims of the Nazis, which does a disservice to military personnel, the medical corps, journalists, historians and a large swath of the general population.

LEE succeeds in informing us of events in Miller’s life, but we never feel either what it is like to be her, or that we truly know her. It is a chronicle that winds up keeping us at a distance from its subject, and sometimes presents us with myopic perspectives.

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