Lee (2024)

United Kingdom, United States of America

Drama, History, War

RocketScience, Juggle Productions, Brouhaha Entertainment, Sky Original Productions, Hopscotch Films, Vogue Films (GB), MS Partecipations S.A., Hantz Motion Pictures, Pasaca Entertainment, Vogue Studios, 55 Films

Kate Winslet, Josh O'Connor, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard

Ellen Kuras

Lem Dobbs, John Collee, Marion Hume, Marion Hume

Taglines: Some wounds you cannot see.

nazi, photographer, photography, concentration camp, holocaust (shoah), world war ii, war photographer, biography, misogyny, woman director, 1940s, lee miller, vogue magazine

The story of photographer Elizabeth 'Lee' Miller, a fashion model who became an acclaimed war correspondent for Vogue magazine during World War II.

Reviews:

Author: Geronimo1967
Kate Winslet turns in quite an effective performance here as the eponymous photographer who originally arrived in London to be with husband Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård) and to work for the formidable Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough) at "Vogue" magazine as a fashion photographer. With the rise of the Nazis seemingly unstoppable throughout continental Europe, Penrose spends more time on the war effort leaving her more and more determined to prove that she is every bit as capable as her male counterparts. Needless to say there's quite a bit of resistance to her participation in combat zones, but thanks to her own perseverance and an alliance with David Scherman (Andy Samberg) she is soon actively involved in wartime photography and by the end is visiting some of the most ghastly sites ever built seeing, at first hand, the truly stomach-churning atrocities left behind by a now defeated war machine that turned large-scale annihilation into an art form. Her story is being relayed from the comfort of her British home in the 1960s to a man whom we assume is just a journalist. Indeed his obvious nervousness and her antipathetic attitude towards him and his task seems to suggest she sees no value in her memories, but as we develop the threads of her life, we begin to sense that something more exists between her and this young man (Josh O'Connor) which quite neatly puts quite a lot of perspective on the choices made by a woman who probably did put career first. Through the characters of Solange (Marion Cotillard) and Nusch (Noémie Merlant) the film also attempts to put a little meat on the bones of the story of those who had to "co-operate" with their new overlords. Some willingly, some less-so and some, well they didn't live to tell. The production and battle scenarios aren't really so effective - maybe just bit too manicured, the script is a little dry and there's maybe just a bit too much of it, but Winslet shows here that she has plenty of capacity to take on a role that it would have been easy to shower with bravado, but instead she brings a more considered charisma to her portrayal of a woman whose bloody-minded courage provided for some of the most significant imagery of the Second World War. Imagery that even now makes your flesh crawl.