The name Lee Miller may not be familiar but you have most likely seen her photos, some of the first and most iconic of Nazi concentration camps, taken immediately after the defeat of Nazi Germany. The photos show concentration camp survivors and the dead, which proved that the wartime rumors of the Holocaust were true. Lee Miller’s shocking, heartbreaking photos were published in an article titled “Believe It” in American Vogue, dispelling doubts about what had happened in Germany.
That a fashion magazine like Vogue would be the one that published them seems highly unlikely, yet so was the career and life of Lee Miller. Directed by acclaimed cinematographer Ellen Kura, making her feature film directorial debut, the stirring, inspirational drama LEE takes audiences from Lee Miller’s days as a New York fashion model-turned fashion photographer in Paris, who is living a life of pleasure among such important artistic figures as Picasso (Enrique Arce) and surrealist art photographer Man Ray (Samuel Barnett), who mentored her, to her years as a war correspondent and photographer in France and then post-war in Germany.
Kate Winslet gives a breathtaking performance, both as the older Lee Miller and the younger one in pre-war Paris, wartime London and France, and post-war Germany. The older Lee, chain-smoking and downing scotch, recounts her amazing career to a young interviewer (Josh O’Connor), in a framing device that brackets the historical tale.
LEE also features a host of stars, including Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgard, Andrea Riseborough, and Marion Cotillard, and a lot of famous names, in this true story.
Lee Miller started out as a fashion model in New York, achieving success in that field but Miller longed switch careers to photography, a life-long passion. Saying she was done with modeling, Lee moved to Paris, and the drama picks up Lee’s story there, where she is living a high-octane bohemian life, as part of a social circle that includes Pablo Picasso and surrealist photographer Man Ray, who was her mentor and lover. Lee is growing dissatisfied with that life when she meets British artist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgard).
Persuaded to join Penrose in London, Miller escapes shortly before the Nazis invade France, trapping her old friends. In London, Miller gets the chance to break into photography, as a fashion photographer working for editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough) who also employs Cecil Beaton, the royal family’s favorite photographer, who snubs the model-turned-photog. As WWII sweeps across Europe, Lee Miller fights to be able to cover the war, finally returning to France and teaming up with Jewish American photographer David Scherman (Andy Samberg), who was working for Life magazine.
As the war ends, Miller and Scherman race to Germany to capture photographic evidence of Hitler’s evil. The bold, bohemian Lee Miller also finds Hitler’s now vacant apartment, where she and Scherman collaborate on a famous photo of a nude Miller in Hitler’s bath tub with her muddy boots from her visit to Dachau next to the tub, a shot taken just as Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker.
Before Lee and Scherman leave post-war Paris for newly-fallen Germany, Lee finds one her French friends from her carefree pre-London days, Solange D’Ayen (played movingly by Marion Cotillard, in a heartbreaking performance), who hiding in a deserted Nazi command center. Solange has been shattered by the war, and her imprisonment by the Nazis, and now, post war, she waits for her missing husband to return. Lee also encounters other old friends, Paul Eluard (Vincent Colombre), a poet and French Jew, and his wife Nusch Eluard (Noemie Merlant).
Winslet transforms herself from the elegant, hedonistic model-turned-photographer into a fearless, hard-drinking, tough war correspondent Lee became during the war and post-war. It is a showcase performance but both Winslet and Samberg are wonderful in their scenes together, showing real chemistry between the actors. Samberg’s Scherman is steady and reliable but finally briefly breakdowns emotionally after Dachau, crying out about “his people” and Hitler’s evil, in a moving scene. Both Samberg’s Davy Scherman and Winslet’s Lee Miller are passionate about their work, willing to face danger in the field to tell this important story and record it for history. On the other hand, Alexander Skarsgard’s aristocratic Brit Roland Penrose remains a pacifist, who opposes Hitler but does not comprehend Lee’s fearless willingness to place herself in harm’s way.
First-time director Ellen Kura crafts inspiring, powerful film filled with dramatic photography as LEE tells the too-little known story of this fearless, feminist, one-of-a-kind woman who broke barriers for women war correspondents, as she and fellow American war photojournalist Davy Scherman (Andy Samberg) covered the war and then pushed on to post-war Germany. If the film has a flaw, it is in the somewhat awkward framing device, although at the drama’s end you learn why it was used. However, it is a small flaw in an otherwise outstanding film, featuring an outstanding performance from Winslet, playing a historical figure whose name should be better known. Lee Miller left a photographic record of the horrors of Hitler’s hate, and her famous, emotionally-powerful photos still appear in countless books and articles about the Holocaust.
LEE opens Friday, Sept. 27, at multiple area theaters.
RATING: 3.5 out of 4 stars
