Lee, from director Ellen Kuras, stars Kate Winslet as Lee Miller, the photographer and former model, who is regarded as one of the most significant visual journalists of the Second World War. Kuras, making her feature debut, is a former cinematographer, who has worked on films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Bamboozled and If These Walls Could Talk. It shows here in the ways that she knows how to frame and light a scene, a landscape, a room, or a face. The visual work, along with the tremendous lead performance of Winslet, are the film’s strengths.

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The film tells a fairly concentrated story about Miller, in the days just before the war, up to the end of the war, with a framing sequence set in 1977-the year of her death-and so this is not trying to be a life story. Much like A Complete Unknown, this film serves itself well by not attempting an entire life, and yet there is so much to Miller that we are left not knowing, though that is part of her legacy and part of the point of this sometimes frustrating if beautiful film.
Because of its very focused nature, the film is not able to delve deeply or meaningfully into some of its more interesting and important consequences. What it does with them is superb, as the framing story, at first a rather rote device, eventually takes on greater emotional resonance, though how much you are willing to accept it will greatly affect ones opinion of the movie. The introduction of a group of friends that Lee leaves behind in France, on the eve of war, is something the film only brings back into play late in the run time.

Courtesy Roadside Attractions
The film seems at times almost in a rush to get into the war, and then to rush through the very best bits at the end. What happens in the middle is very good, but might have been served better by letting the audience really get to know Lee’s friends. Yet, these are minor quibbles in a film that is about an artist struggling to express herself and find her place in the world. Little of this will be on ones mind when they are watching the outcomes of the war and holocaust which fill up most of the second half of the film.
At times, the film is very conventional and you get Lee being oppressed and rising up against the oppression. Yet, what separates this work is not only the ferocity of Winslet’s commitment to the part, but the fact these events really happened and the film plays them as responses to trauma. Indeed, the film is largely about dealing with past pain and running from it, how it can hurt you and those around you. It never fully lands, but what is here is remarkably capable of affecting a viewer.

Courtesy Roadside Attractions
The most powerful elements of the film, namely, Lee’s commitment to other women who have or are suffering sexually or because of cultural shame related to sexual acts, work better than anything else in the story. However, earlier context might have helped give the audience a lens to understand her through. This is a smart and capable script, but it is not one that takes risks. The director, using all her gifts with actors and visual storytelling, does her best to keep the action moving. Several of the lovelier grace notes in the film seem to be a result of actor and director, rather than script. Indeed, it will be interesting to see if the two work together again, as the combination here proved quite potent. A fine portrait of an important figure in 20th century cultural history.
Lee is now available on all digital platforms.
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