Winslet powerfully conveys Miller’s tough-broad magnetism in this sobering, visually striking drama by cinematographer turned director Ellen Kuras
More than most people, the American photographer Lee Miller – played here by a fierce and committed Kate Winslet – understood the vulnerability of being a woman in front of a camera. A model since childhood (first for her father, a keen amateur snapper, then as a fashion model, then as a muse and artistic collaborator with the surrealist artist Man Ray), Miller learned about photography from both sides of the lens. She knew from experience that taking a picture can be a kind of theft, a one-way transaction in which the subject gives a part of themselves but receives very little in return.
This sobering, serious-minded partial biopic, which focuses on Miller’s stint as a war correspondent during the second world war, makes a case that her insight into the power dynamics of photography contributed to the extraordinary potency of her work. Her status as both a victim (her childhood rape is revealed in a jarringly clumsy exchange with her friend and employer, Vogue editor Audrey Withers, played by Andrea Riseborough) and a survivor brought her an unusual empathy with her subjects. She saw the micro-details of combat in a way that her male counterparts frequently overlooked – not just the role played by the unheralded everywoman on the street, but also the shame and humiliation felt by those whom the war had chewed up and spat out along the way. The directorial debut of American cinematographer Ellen Kuras (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Lee is not the most formally daring or original biopic. It is, however, undeniably impactful: a woman’s-eye view of a photographer who cast a woman’s eye over the war and its aftermath.
