Why LEE should be on your must-watch list this month
It’s always telling when no one moves out of their seat as the credits roll at the end of a film in the cinema. Watching LEE was one of those times, every journalist stuck in their place as world war II journalist Lee Miller's real-life photographs flashed up on the screen in between credits, all of us awe struck by what we’d just seen.
The film stars Kate Winslet as Lee Miller, a model and muse turned photographer for British Vogue, whose images of World War II are amongst the most significant historical documents of the war in Europe. Marion Cotillard plays French Vogue fashion editor Solange d’Ayen, Alexander Skarsgård is Lee’s husband Roland Penrose, while Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg and Josh O’Connor also star.
Despite her imperative role in the course of history, Lee went largely uncelebrated during her own lifetime. It was only when her son, Antony Penrose (Josh O’Connor), discovered thousands of her photographs in the attic after her death that even he knew of his mother’s legacy, and has since devoted his life to ensuring her work is properly archived.
So it’s no wonder Kate, who stars as Lee in the film and also produced the movie, has been so passionate about getting the photographer’s story told. In fact, so determined was she, that Kate personally covered the entire cast and crew’s wages for two weeks while funds were low during pre-production, as well as filming most of her scenes with a back injury.
Perhaps that’s why Kate plays the character of Lee so well on screen – dogged determination and a strong moral compass run through both women. It’s this side of Lee, her complete and undeterred resolve to ‘do her bit’ during the war effort, that Kate captures so brilliantly.
Because, despite the country encouraging everyone to ‘do their bit’, war was very much a man’s game in 1940s Britain and, as a middle-aged woman, Lee found it nearly impossible to be allowed to travel to France to document the realities of war for British Vogue and its editor, Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough).
This idea of Lee being a woman in a man’s world comes up multiple times during the film, reminding us of the additional struggle Lee constantly came up against compared with her friend and fellow Life photographer, David Scherman (Andy Samberg), with whom she often teamed up with on assignments.
But the film mostly serves as a powerful reminder of the human side of war that we often forget. One scene shows how communities were turned against each other, when a French girl is publicly shamed by her neighbours for being used by German soldiers for information. Another show’s Lee coming to a French woman’s rescue when an American soldier tries to rape her in the street because he says she should be ‘thankful’ for his help.
This was the war Lee experienced, saw and photographed: the people war leaves in its wake, with wounds you cannot see and that will never, ever heal. Lee pointedly reflects on this in the film, a remark that’s made even more affecting by the fact that she too didn’t escape the war unscathed, having suffered with PTSD for years afterwards.
From posing in Hitler’s bathtub for what became an infamous photograph, to being one of the first people to see and document the atrocities that were uncovered at the German concentration camps, Lee never lost her sense of humanity. In 2024, LEE is unfortunately an all too timely reminder for us to not forget the people that get caught in the crossfire of conflict.
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