It’s increasingly difficult to find a movie in theatres that isn’t a horror—the genre that typically has the least to offer female viewers—so when I saw the trailer for this war drama about American photographer and war correspondent Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, played by Kate Winslet, I rushed to the theatre. Lee did not disappoint. This partial biopic about capturing the truth is likely the most intelligent film in theatres this month (and certainly my favourite war film to date).
Lee is a war drama for those who, like me, don’t enjoy war films. There’s minimal shooting and bombing. The colour palette is muted during the war scenes; its brightest colours are reserved for scenes in the present (i.e. 1977) and Miller’s happy times in France with her friends in 1938. Killing isn’t glorified here. The usual soldier heroes are absent. When Miller enters a field hospital and photographs an amputation, the camera goes out of focus, sparing us the vivid details. Given that the film’s main themes are war and rape, the filmmakers did well to be selective about the atrocities they depicted. Lee’s themes risked demoralising the audience, but the filmmakers skillfully avoided it.
The story, based on the biography The Lives of Lee Miller authored by Miller’s son (Antony Penrose), roughly covers her war correspondent years: 1938 to 1945—just one part of Miller’s exciting life. In 1938 she is enjoying herself in the south of France with her artist friends when she meets her future husband, artist/art dealer Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård). They are all preoccupied by Hitler’s rise to power. Miller and Roland begin a love affair, and she moves to London with him. She gets work at British Vogue, chronicling the Blitz and when she decides she wants to go to the front to do her part and Vogue won’t send her she applies to go as an American, becoming one of the first women to do so. Miller covers the war in France and Paris after the liberation. Then she and her American photographer friend David Scherman (Andy Samberg) drive to Germany to find out what happened to all the people who boarded trains and never returned. Miller was one of the first photographers to enter Nazi concentration camps. Not depicted in Lee are Miller’s childhood, fashion model days and motherhood. We only get a glimpse of her life after World War II.
Lee’s filmmaking team comprised many women, among them director Ellen Kuras, two of the three writers (Liz Hannah, Marion Hume and John Collee), four female producers—including Kate Winslet—and several female executive producers. Among the other aspects entrusted to women were production design, casting, set decoration and script supervision. The result of this composition is a film that has much to offer the female audience.
Lee’s sympathies lie with women and girls. It’s subtly feminist. Through its depiction of one woman’s life, it shines a spotlight on the female condition. Lee brings a light touch to its examination of the question of how one man raping a girl affects her entire life, as well as the lives of those closest to her. Miller says to her adult son (Josh O’Connor) in 1977, “There are different kinds of wounds. Not just the ones you can see” and to David, “Bad things do happen to some of us girls.” She says to her British Vogue editor friend Audrey (Andrea Riseborough), regarding men and rape, “But it happens all the time, and they just get away with it.”
Female filmmakers tend to portray rape more adroitly than their male counterparts, and 65-year-old Ellen Kuras handles it deftly in Lee. Of its three rapes/attempted rapes, only one is shown, and even this one is suggested rather than graphically depicted. We hear a young French woman repeatedly saying No off camera but what we see is Miller stopping in a Parisian street and realising a violation is occurring in the alley. She runs to the woman’s rescue, pushes the would-be rapist—an American soldier—off her and pulls a knife on him. As for the other two rapes, they aren’t depicted at all, simply mentioned. For instance, Miller asks Audrey, regarding the little girl she found in a concentration camp in 1945: “This happened… How does she move on?” The consideration shown to female viewers in its representations of sexual abuse is one of Lee’s greater strengths.
Another is Lee’s determined, brave and self-confident protagonist, who perseveres to capture the truth of the war, despite the obstacles in her path. Miller is inspiring, and she doesn’t allow men to stand in her way. While trying to convince Audrey to send her to the front so that she may do her part, she says: “Why should the men get to decide what that is?” She refuses to comply with the American army’s sexist rules.
Lee offers us good, unhurried storytelling, narrated by a woman. It’s intimate, opening with the sound of a beating heart and full of close-ups of 49-year-old Winslet and her co-stars. It skips back and forth between the Second World War and 1977 but we’re never lost. We’re transported from France to England and Germany. We meet Miller’s artist friends, including Nusch and Paul Éluard and Man Ray and French Vogue editor Solange d’Ayen (Marion Cotillard). We’re given loving, affectionate relationships between female characters—another benefit of a female filmmaking team.
Miller wanted to do her part to help the war effort, the one she envisioned rather than the one men would allow her. She refused to look away and found her voice. Lee shows us how Miller moved on after being raped as a child and told never to tell anyone. As an introduction to Miller and her work as a war correspondent, it will do more than just fine.
Lee is rated R and has a running time of 120 minutes. It was released on September 27.
Alline Cormier
Film analyst
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