LEE: 3 STARS. “a reminder of the importance of photo-journalism.”
SYNOPSIS: In “Lee,” a new biopic now playing in theatres, Kate Winslet plays celebrated war correspondent and photographer Lee Miller. The fiercely independent former fashion model became a World War II correspondent for British Vogue, covering the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.
CAST: Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg, Noémie Merlant, Josh O’Connor, Alexander Skarsgård. Directed by Ellen Kuras.
REVIEW: As a reminder of the importance of journalism and photography, “Lee” contains several unforgettable moments. Recreations of her famous photographs dot the film.
Memorable images of an “unexploded bomb” sign stuck to a tree or a nurse’s underwear hung in a window to dry, mirror her innate visual style, one that combined artful composition with stark matter-of-fact journalism. “Even when I wanted to look away,” she says. “I knew I couldn’t.”
Perhaps Miller’s most famous photograph captured her in front of the camera.
In the iconic image, set up by Miller and taken by Life Magazine photographer David Scherman (Andy Samberg), she is topless, bathing in Adolph Hitler’s bathtub on April 30, 1945, the day Hitler killed himself. New Yorker writer Chris Wiley called it an “apt visual metaphor for the end of the war” and it remains a potent symbol of triumph against evil.
When the film focusses on Miller’s trailblazing work, as in the above examples, “Lee” shines.
Winslet is terrific as the fiercely committed photographer, but she is let down by a conventional set-up—an older Miller looking back on her life—and a tendency to drift from the character’s inner life to the story’s more mundane aspects.
“Lee” is a serviceable film, but it is nowhere near as remarkable as the woman whose story it tells.
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