Review: Lee

Director:  Ellen Kuras

Stars:  Kate Winslet, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg

It’s been quite a year for the war correspondent. First Alex Garland used his thought-experiment action movie Civil War to sneak us a musing on the compulsions of the hazardous vocation, and now (actually belatedly) Ellen Kuras makes a sturdy leap from prestige TV to the big screen at the helm of this durable WW2 biopic of Lee Miller, former model turned Vogue photographer who ventured bravely across war-torn Europe capturing some of the most stark and vivid images of the blighted continent and its people.

Portrayed here in a committed and full-throated manner by a stalwart Kate Winslet, Lee’s story is framed as a terse interview conducted by Anthony (Josh O’Connor) at her farmhouse home in the late ’70s. Plastered in the familiar prestige biopic old-age make-up, Lee begrudgingly takes him on a guided tour of her spotted history. Thus we start in the relative gaiety of the 1930s, Lee snapping her way around France with a ragtag bunch of sexpot bohemian buddies. It is in their company that she meets dashing connoisseur Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård), who whisks her to London before war breaks out.

While Roland remains at home, a conscientious objector finding creative ways to aid the war effort, Lee muscles her way into a more participatory venture. Vivaciously sidestepping patriarchal mandates designed to keep her safely on British soil, Lee makes it to France where she encounters Life journalist David E. Scherman (an against-type Andy Samberg) and the pair weave their way into more and more perilous territory. But even as the prospect of victory in Europe has all and sundry celebrating, word of mass disappearances compel Lee to push further and become one of the first to witness the true horrors of the Nazi regime.

Winslet makes Miller a tremendously tenacious figure to spend two hours with, so much so that one can’t help but wish for a film that matches her boldness and gumption. Lee isn’t that movie, staying carefully and safely within the preset parameters of comfortable prestige fare. As it’s dedicated protagonists move further and further into war-torn territory colour is dutifully bleached from the picture until we’re in a familiar grey and green fug to denote the gravity of suffering, and the inevitable crossing into concentration camp grounds is imbued with the appropriate grim reverence and intensity. But there’s little cinematic wherewithal to match it’s subject’s trailblazing. Miller’s monochrome snaps remain the most stirring imagery conjured.

It doesn’t help matters that the script occasionally trips up, putting trite exchanges and observations in it’s characters’ mouths, nor does an eleventh hour twist in the wraparound story feel particularly needed. It draws focus, and not in a good way. Lee boasts an absolutely stacked and sterling cast, but – Winslet aside – doesn’t really utilise these assets effectively. Josh O’Connor, Noémie Merlant and Marion Cotillard are lead actors moonlighting in the thinnest of roles here. Samberg shows, at least, that he can maintain a straight face, but Skarsgård seems more focused on perfecting a plummy British accent (semi-successfully) than making someone remarkable out of Roland.

Lee is a serviceable tour through beaten and beleaguered Europe. Winslet will probably get a nod or two’s recognition out of it, and justifiably so, but colouring closely within the lines has made Kuras’ feature debut feel a little too safe. Even when Lee herself is toying with the transgressive – the notoriously staged photo of her nude in Hitler’s bathroom – there’s only the briefest interrogation of the confused motivations at work. A couple of clumsy acknowledgements to the present rise of fascist blowhards hiding in plain sight notwithstanding, Lee locks history in a box, only to be unpacked when discovered through happenstance. It’s a perfectly fine war biopic, but with a firebrand case study like Lee Miller to live up to, the paucity of ambition displayed tends to announce itself.