Film Review: Lee – SM Mirror

At the Movies With…
Lady Beverly Cohn
Editor-at-Large

There is no doubt in my mind that Kate Winslet will be nominated in the Best Actress category for her riveting performance in LEE, a biographical film by first-time director Ellen Kras. Based on The Lives of Lee Miller, penned by Lee’s son Roland Penrose, the screenplay was written by

Liz Hannah, John Collee, and Marion Hume and span ten years of Lee’s life from 1938 – 1948.

We first meet Lee, a middle-aged bohemian, no-nonsense woman with limited patience, at a countryside luncheon in the outskirts of Paris where talk of the war is part of a lively

conversation. She and one other woman are bare-breasted while the rest of her friends are appropriately dressed. Now, I’m no prude, but that decision by the director seemed quite

arbitrary and was a bit jarring. However, kudos to Winslet who “lets it all hang out” a number of times, including taking a bath in what was Hitler’s bathtub. Lee, a former Vogue model, is quite restless and tries to control her anxieties by drinking heavily and chain smoking. At present, she is a top Vogue fashion photographer but is restless and wants to do more with her life than just photographing beautiful models.

She decides to become a World War II correspondent and under the auspices of the British Vogue magazine becomes their official war-time photojournalist which, for a woman, was going to be an uphill climb. In the beginning, she was excluded from Army press conferences because women were not invited. With fierce determination and an unrelenting drive, she eventually travels to the front to shoot the action on her Rolleiflex camera, capturing casualties of

war as well as some of the most shocking, gruesome shots of the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps where the smell was so vile she had to cover her nose to breathe.

Cinematographer Pawel Edelman’s excellent probing camera zeroed in on some of the most grueling scenes as well as capturing a few of the rare lighthearted moments. We see the dangers she experienced, sometimes dodging bullets and actually sustaining an injury. Even with the close calls and the dangers she faced, nothing deterred her determination to capture the shocking images that lay before her setting the high bar for future photojournalists who would walk in her footsteps.

While Winslet does an incredible job as Lee, her co-stars do not fare nearly as well. Whether it was a poorly written script or poor direction or perhaps a combination of the two, the supporting roles just didn’t work. For example, at her side during some of the most dangerous battle scenes is her friend and colleague, Life magazine photographer David E. Scherman played by Andy Samberg. He is a skilled actor but if I could have read his mind, it would be something like

“What should I do now?”

Also not hitting the characterization mark is the usually compelling Marion Cotillard as Solange D’Ayen, playing the fashion director of the French Vogue magazine. Who will ever forget her haunting role as Billie Frechette in Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” in which she co-starred with Johnny Depp as John Dillinger? Josh O’Connor is listed as “the reporter” and in one scene is interviewing Lee. Their relationship is confusing and muddy and what should have been a pivotal moment, just didn’t work. Alexander Skarsgård, a very fine actor, plays her husband but 

is in search of a character and definition of his relationship with Lee. One exception, who is obviously script and director proof, is Andrea Riseborough as Audrey Withers, the editor of Vogue and Lee’s friend. She delivers a strong, multi-layered characterization that is sustained

throughout the film.

Alas as the old show biz axiom goes: “If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage,” so whether the script is faulty or poor direction from Kras, the combined effort resulted in a flawed film. However, that said, this is clearly Kate Winslet’s movie and worth seeing just to experience her intense portrait of Lee Miller, a remarkable, driven woman who dared to go where no other woman had gone.

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