DAN WEBSTER:
It’s been nearly six* decades since the end of World War II, and filmmakers are still making movies about it. It’s only natural, though, since we’re addressing a conflict that rocked the whole planet and caused the deaths of some 75—or more—million people.
And given the current political situation, that long-ago struggle against fascism could be seen as more relevant today than ever.
In any event, the war and its attendant horror stand at the heart of the film Lee, a biographical exploration of a certain period in the life of the fashion model-turned-photographer Lee Miller. Released theatrically in September, the film is now available to screen through several streaming services.
As played by Kate Winslet, Miller was the embodiment of a woman whose mantra was: “I was born determined.” The question that she has trouble answering for much of the film, though, involves what exactly the focus of her determination should be.
Directed by Ellen Kuras and based on an original script credited to three writers—Liz Hannah, Marion Hume, and John Collee—Lee begins during a particularly harrowing moment. Miller’s hardheadedness as a war correspondent has won her a chance to visit the front, where no civilian women—even journalists—are allowed to be. Instead of the safely secured city she had expected to find, though, Miller finds herself under fire.
From there, director Kuras cuts to a rural home, where a much older version of Miller is facing another kind of fire: being interviewed—she calls it an interrogation—by a young man (played by the British actor Josh O’Connor).
And that defines the style that Kuras is going for, shifting back and forth from one scene, one era, to the next—including seeing Miller in her pre-war, post-modeling years where she cavorts with friends and connects with the man, Roland Penrose (played by Alexander Skarsgård), who would become the father of their only child. We watch as the specter of German fanaticism slowly takes hold, and then after the war when Miller—after witnessing the worst of the death camps—is haunted by what she has seen.
Unfortunately, though Kuras manages to capture some powerful visuals—one, especially, features children playing football near train cars full of rotting corpses—a good portion of her film’s dialogue sounds stilted.
In one scene Miller, struggling to write about her experiences, says: “I want it to be good. I want it to be true, but I… I want it to be good.” To which Life photographer Davy Scherman (played by Andy Samberg) replies: “Worry about the true part first—make it good later.” Or in a later scene, one of Miller’s French friends—having just come out of hiding—says: “Paris is like a smile where half the teeth are missing.”
Clunky dialogue isn’t the only problem. Miller talks about the shame felt by young French women identified as German collaborators having their heads shaved. “There are different kinds of wounds,” she says. “Not just the ones you can see.” At that, Kuras cuts to a shot of Miller taking a long swig from a flask. Cue the obvious foreshadowing card.
Even the acting is uneven. Marion Cotillard, an Oscar winner for the 2007 film La Vie En Rose, is effective in a role that’s basically a cameo. O’Connor is equally good. But amid such a cast—Winslet, too, won an Oscar, hers for the 2008 film The Reader—the ex-Saturday Night Live cast member Samberg is barely believable, even when he’s not delivering his wooden dialogue.
Kuras does recreate the famous photo of Miller posing—as she actually did—in Hitler’s bathtub. Miller’s only concern is that Scherman ensure that her breasts don’t show. Otherwise, she says, “we’ll never get it past the censors.”
Winslet, who served as a producer for the film, clearly has no such qualms. She readily bares her breasts, has her character smoke a ton of cigarettes, and spouts the F-word as if she were a Marine Corps drill instructor. Forget about thematic relevancy, and enjoy Winslet’s characterization. Even Lee Miller would have admired that level of determination.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
*Correction: eight
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.