‘Lee’ – Review
Academy Award-winner Kate Winslet is a powerhouse performer who is always ready to challenge herself with intense and thought-provoking roles, and now she brings to life a project that has long-held a personal connection to her as she realises the life of famed photographer and war correspondent Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller to the big screen, and chronicles the cost and trauma that followed Miller she strove to document the truth in Lee.
Lee Miller goes from a career as a model to enlisting as a photographer to chronicle the events of World War II for Vogue magazine as told to an interviewer in 1977.
Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller has long been regarded as the most important war correspondent of all time. Her uniquely feminine perspective of World War II and the images that she captured through her surrealist lies of the reality, heroism, heartbreak, and terror of one of the 20th Century’s most defining conflicts still affect audiences to this day. Lee is her story brought to life. A long-held passion project of Academy Award-winning actress Kate Winslet and cinematographer turned director Ellen Kuras, who have longed to do this project for more than twenty years now, see their vision become a reality, and this is a picture that grasps you fully in its embrace and shakes up your emotions with a fury. Kuras takes an innovative and narratively creative approach to the framing of her story and frames it around an artist who is witnessing the events of this turbulent era and recalling and combing via memory. Lee is immediate and visceral in its story, and Kuras sets a pace that allows the audience to absorb every piece of the picture, and they’re sure to get wrapped up in it.
Kate Winslet is an actress of immense power and range, and her focus and commitment to the artistry of her projects have been a defining part of her career. Telling the story of Lee Miller’s turbulent life has been a long-time passion project for the actress, one which she has carried with her for more than 20 years, and now she realises this in this picture. And her impact is powerful. Winslet captures both the free-spirited bohemian artist that lies at the heart of Miller’s soul, along with an unquenching thirst to capture the truth and to be where the action is. But it’s through the course of the film and the unrelenting trauma and horror that she witnesses in this conflict that seems to be ungodly in its rage where the drama truly takes hold.
Winslet captures the reaction and shock of Miller to the events of World War II, and as the realisation of what has occurred following the liberation of Paris and the scarred remnants of what happened during the reign of Nazi Germany is brought into the light, it is almost too much for her to bear. Winslet brings incredible emotion to her performance of Lee Miller, and with director Ellen Kuras, we get an idea of the female perspective of war. As audiences, we are so used to war films that portray these events through the male guise in pictures such as Saving Private Ryan and We Were Soldiers, Lee takes a directly female approach, and Winslet’s perspective as a woman and her eye as a photographer helps to show the conflict from those directly impacted by it, and it is heart-wrenchingly intense to watch. It is in the film’s third act and the resolution of the film’s narrative framing where the true power of Lee’s emotions are realised, and you’ll be on the verge of tears thanks to Winslet’s performances.
Lee is a film that seeks to be true to history, with Miller’s photos and extensive diaries serving to shape its key narrative pieces. We witness her life as a Bohemian artist in France, her work with British vogue, and the sudden shift in climate that results from Hitler’s invasion of Poland and everything that follows with it. Doing everything she can to reach the front line, Kuras does not hold back on the bloodshed, violence, and the worst moments of humanity that Miller personally witnessed but, more importantly, documented. The framing of the discovery of the concentration camps and Miller’s experience witnessing the extreme horror of Dachau, juxtaposed with her visit to Hitler’s and infamous portrait in his bathtub, are the film’s most intense and overwhelming moments, and Winslet captures the true shock and overwhelming feeling of witness humanity’s worst moment, which plays out in the sense of ‘real-time’ in the film’s narrative, and it will move you to your core.
Audiences will see Kate Winslet at her finest in Lee. This film is a profoundly moving and evocative piece of art that touches the heart and spirit, honouring a woman who couldn’t look away from her work.
Image: StudioCanal
