Even though Kate Winslet puts forth a strong performance and makes the film’s last third quite moving, Lee seems to fall into the bio-pic trap of attempting to streamline a significant amount of a well-known persona’s life into a span of two hours. Devoted to the period when the model Lee Miller started her career as a photojournalist, the documentary made by Ellen Kuras tries to cope with a few decades and suffers from attempting to do too much. The biography is approved by Miller’s son Antony, and his credibility score is quite high. However, the production was not successful too, regarding the dramatic structure and how the main character was portrayed throughout the story to the end.
“The film opens during the twilight of pre-World War II 1937 where we see Lee Miller, a photographer played by Kate Winslet enjoying time with her friends including her soon-to-be lover Roland Penrose amongst many including Solange d’Ayen, Nusch Eluard in their European getaway where they discuss Hitler and his growing influence within the German Reich. Now forward to the UK’s blitz, where we see Lee Miller once again but this time with a slightly edgy stance, expressing her frustrations of not being active in the war, which judging by the timelines, was certainly a world apart from being on a potential country trip with friends. To strike a balance she decides to meet Vogue’s editor – Audrey Withers and offers her services instead as a war correspondent which again is a job with honor but in no way comparable to being at a frontline of the war. Even In the beginning, it was quite obvious that she would be stationed away from action but instead, accompanied by Life’s David Scherman, she found herself well within the war, and this allowed her to take some of the most stunning and startling images of the Paris liberation and Wagner concentration camps.”
The first half of Lee’s first two-thirds is much more scattershot, taking a greatest-hits approach, affecting the background and recreating some of the best known photographs of the title character. For Miller, who is a photographer, it is easier to be an outsider/other. She is however bothered by the war as she is ‘outside’ the story, and the war affects the surroundings. This, however, shifts the film entirely as Lee’s underlying strength states in the beginning after landing in Germany in early 1945, complexity in suffering and death.
They are chilling to witness, and they are uncompromising and brutal in terms of what the holocaust footage depicts, which was all captured by Miller’s lens. The worst days of Dachau and Buchenwald and the torment that mentally altered Miller are also recreated in the film. The footage during these moments that are frequently shot in only semi-lighted sequences belts out the intensity and range of the actress’s performance as well as the direction. The photo that is probably the most famous one she took during her time, which is when Miller is lying in the bathtub in Munich during her meeting with Hitler (though Scherman was the one who photographed that moment) is reverently re-enacted.
The film begins in the present in 1977 when Miller is 70 years old. During this time she is ready to be interviewed by a reporter out of limbo(nice aging disguise worn by Winslet) who believes that Miller’s images should be better known across the world. Miller is hesitant to do so but eventually accepts his request. He tells her that if she tells him about her life, he will publish it for all to see. Thus, there follows a long sequence of memories, every so often returning to July ’77. Although there is some reward to the few memories in July of 77, it could just as well be said that the reasoning behind the alternating cut sequences is not enough to make the changes in the narrative structure worthwhile.
It’s pretty evident that Lee Miller’s life story is compelling enough to be depicted in some form of drama, though, considering the temporal restrictions set by a normal film length, it seems that filming it on the cinema screen may not have been the most effective option. Putting more emphasis on sequences preceding the war would have supplied us with more images of Miller who is a completely different person after the war. More crucially, it would have fleshed out the other minor characters who enabled me some familiarity with their faces yet they remain thinly sketched. Ultimately, even though some of the third act’s scenes are impressive, it can be concluded that Lee does stand out from the majority of the average bio-pics that are produced to fill a void; however, it does not stand far apart.
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