'Lee' Follows a Woman Who Captured War’s Worst Atrocities

By Sara Clements | Film | September 30, 2024 |

By Sara Clements | Film | September 30, 2024 |

“You have a 45mm automatic pistol on your lap, and I have a 35mm camera on my lap, and my weapon is just as powerful as yours.” This quote by Gordon Parks speaks truth to the fact that a weapon of war can also be a camera — it can even be said that it’s more powerful. A gun creates carnage, but a camera captures and makes it unceasing. Lee Miller climbed into a train full of corpses, stood among them, and photographed the faces of horrified soldiers looking in. After photographing the liberated concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau, she took off her muddy boots, wiping off the horror and devastation on the clean bath mat, and took a bath in Hitler’s bathtub.

Her work as a war correspondent for Vogue during World War II exposed the terrible truths of the Nazi regime. What Miller captured during the war, from the London Blitz to the liberation of Paris and the Holocaust, was shocking, horrific, but above all, brave. Before seeing images by photographers like her, the world was in the dark. Her contributions changed everything, becoming some of the most significant pictures of the 20th century. A work she kept hidden for much of her life, to be rediscovered by her son, is now at the forefront of Ellen Kuras’s directorial debut, Lee.

The film begins in reflection, as Lee (Kate Winslet) is reluctantly questioned about her past by a young, journalist-type character (Josh O’Connor). He’s curious, but she deters his questions. She hides trauma and pain with a deflection of unimportance. She refers to her work as “just pictures,” but the young man (whose identity is an unnecessary twist) doesn’t believe that. He wants to know the stories behind them — and, boy, are there stories. The elderly American ex-model and surrealist photographer flashes back with narration to a time of joie de vivre, followed by a time of war. Her days in France where she enjoyed the simple things in life, like drinking, sex, the company of friends, and taking pictures, all changed with a move to London with her lover, artist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård).

We see a glimpse of a different Lee in those early scenes. A more lively character, but one with curiosity for people and good at reading them, qualities she carries still in 1977 while being interviewed. Pre-war life is shown with brightness, but once the war hits, it’s as though the sun is turned off with a switch. The film remains grey for the remainder as bleakness permeates, something that seems impossible to get away from but something that Lee runs right into. “What do you want to be now,” her friend Solange (Marion Cotillard) asks. As the war raging in Europe creeps in closer and her friends begin to go into hiding in France, she can’t sit idle and do what is expected of women whose men are off to war. She decides to challenge the patriarchy, putting herself on the front lines; not with a gun, but with a camera. She encounters many hurdles, but her ambition and determination drive her to become a war photographer.

Bombs raining down on London become daily life and she captures it all, and with Life Magazine’s David Sherman (Andy Samberg) at her side, they document both devastation and triumph. Lee captures scenes of war in the middle of gunfire and explosions. Covered in sweat and dust, she snaps photos in moments where her life could end just as quickly as the shutter clicks. She also captures jubilation as a free France celebrates victory. But she wasn’t prepared for what her most important images would capture. She expresses at times wanting to look away but can’t. As one character puts it, “The only sane response to tyranny is to create.”

Miller’s eye wasn’t just for photography - she could see into a soul. It begs the question, how do you separate yourself from it all? There’s another film released this year that also explores the camera’s role in war. Alex Garland’s Civil War looks at the titular conflict in a more modern yet dystopian setting, with its main character, Lee Smith, being a reference to Miller. Both films look at the effects of violence on a person, especially regarding getting the shot versus interfering. Miller’s influence on Civil War speaks to her impact.

There are glimpses of the war’s scars through Winslet’s performance as she steps into Miller’s combat boots, especially as she believes the images she captured will be lost. David breaks down after seeing the death of his people. Solange is almost unrecognizable after France’s liberation. A shadow of herself, she matches the grey palette of the frame. All color is gone. Our desensitization to violent images that Civil War touches on could never have the same impact on those who capture them.

It’s difficult to make every character as fleshed out as its titular one. Lee struggles at making every character not feel surface level, even Miller herself doesn’t have a lot of backstory. One can acknowledge though, as this is a film whose main focus is on her work, it would be hard to capture a subject’s entire life in a short runtime. However, what we do learn paints a portrait of a pretty badass lady who overcame enough to understand how to capture victims of war, especially women, with tenderness and honesty. Being transported, through faithful recreation to the moments where she shot her most famous photographs, brings so much more context and emotion to every scene. Lee makes you appreciate even more the brave correspondents who continue to follow in Miller’s footsteps — bearing witness to atrocities that continue.