Lee (10/10)

by Tony Medley

116 minutes

R.

This isn’t just one of the best movies of the year, or one of the best of the Century, it ranks as one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.

Lee Miller (Kate Winslett) was born in 1907 and became a prominent model for many magazines, including Vogue. Because she was a vibrant, ambitious woman she tired of modeling, moved to Paris, studied surrealist photography and opened her own studio. She hobnobbed with the avant-garde and the film opens with her vacationing with her libertine friends in 1938 shortly before the start of WWII in the South of France, lunching outside, two of the women topless (including Lee), setting the tone of their milieu.

Thus begins the complex movie that introduces Lee Miller to a world who has never heard of her. This is not just a slice of her life, but a pivotal slice. It’s one of the best war movies ever made. But it’s not about a battle (like 1945’s A Walk in the Sun, 1949’s Battleground and Sands of Iwo Jima and 1998’s Saving Private Ryan). This shows the results of the devastation caused Parisians by the Nazis occupation, circas 1940-44, which is as effective as showing the war itself. Those scenes brought to mind Oscar Hammerstein’s song (melody by Jerome Kern) The Last Time I Saw Paris (1940), which always brings tears to my eyes.

The battle scenes show the lengths to which Lee would go to get the pictures she wanted, and the horror of battle as Lee was in personal danger on the war front.

Lee fought to be assigned to photograph the war. When she was finally successful, she met fellow photographer David E. Scherman (Andy Samberg) and they travelled the war zone getting their pictures, including the iconic shot of Lee in Hitler’s bathtub.

Directed by first-timer (an award-winning cinematographer) Ellen Kuras, the stellar cast includes Alex Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard (in a heart-rending performance), and Andrea Riseborough. Although apparently there were problems with the script (whatever happened, I think it is Oscar®-quality) the credits go to Marion Hume, Liz Hannah, and John Collee.

The method of telling the story is brilliant. An older Lee is being interviewed by an unidentified much younger interviewer (Josh O’Connor) and she is telling her story in flashbacks. When it ended, I was sitting there stunned.

This was a pet project of Winslett and she took pains to concentrate on the part of Lee’s life that would present a true picture of her character. It gets an R rating probably because of the several topless shots (Winslett has never been shy about displaying her breasts). While I realize why they are in the film, I don’t think they are worth having a PG film be converted into an R rating because this is a wonderful film for young people to see.