Kate Winslet Is Captivating in World War II Photojournalist Biopic Lee

When Antony Penrose discovered a box of journals, love letters and thousands upon thousands of photographs taken during World War II hidden in his mother’s attic, he saw a woman he did not recognize. His mother, Lee Miller, had never recounted her experiences of the war to her family, nor did she go to much effort to promote her work. It was only after her death in 1977 and upon the discovery of these items that her son would come to learn who his mother really was—which would in turn provide the inspiration for Ellen Kuras’ Lee, a gripping biopic documenting the life of the photojournalist.

Kuras avoids fashioning Lee as a generic war biopic by using Miller’s life story as a means through which to explore the myriad experiences of women during war. The relationships Miller (Kate Winslet) builds with women—and the combative nature of most of her relationships with men—shape much of the film. As a female photographer and war journalist, she is constantly belittled by her male peers; fellow photographer Cecil Beaton (Samuel Barnett) makes scathing remarks about her age and appearance, she is forbidden military access where her male counterparts are welcomed, and she is told point blank by a colonel that they “don’t send women into combat.” Each double standard fuels Miller’s desire to pursue her career with that much more fervor despite the warnings from her friends and colleagues of the danger ahead.

Though the cast of Lee is filled with familiar faces, they spend much of the film with very little to do. Marion Cotillard’s presence as French journalist Solange d’Ayen is spare, Alexander Skarsgård’s portrayal of Miller’s husband Roland Penrose comes across as mawkish and Andrea Riseborough’s exaggerated mannerisms as British Vogue editor Audrey Withers feel a little like a caricature. To his credit, Andy Samberg gives a convincing dramatic performance as photojournalist David Scherman, one of the few men who Miller doesn’t butt heads with on a daily basis. And while Josh O’Connor has very few lines as Miller’s son Antony, his performance is rather affecting. All sad eyes and inquisitive brows, O’Connor plays the consummate interviewer, quiet in his contemplation and never imposing on his subject.

Winslet plays Miller as abrasive and forward, uncaring towards outsiders’ opinions but deeply sympathetic towards the lives of those she photographs. She is driven by a need to be in the midst of the action; when she is told that she, as a woman, cannot be deployed by the British as a war reporter, she finds a loophole in her American nationality to defy these orders. When her husband implores her to abandon her job and return to the safety of London, she ventures further to the frontlines, determined to make herself worthwhile during the war. Miller dedicates her life to her work, perhaps to the detriment of her personal relationships, but as she admits herself, without the burden of motherhood, Miller was allowed to be “single-minded.” So, while the men are sent to battle and her artist friends are forced to go into hiding in Paris, Miller focuses all her efforts on using her work to document the war.

After reuniting with Solange and hearing of the torture her friends endured while imprisoned by the Nazis, Miller drunkenly laments to Scherman that “Bad things do happen to some of us girls.” Indeed it is the “bad things” that provide the focus of Lee, and the photographs that Miller takes of the various women she encounters build an intricate tapestry of the lives that may have been forgotten or dismissed from this period.

There are the women accused of collaborating with the Germans during the war—referred to as “collaboratrices,” or “collaborateurs horizontales” for those accused of sleeping with German soldiers—who were marched through the streets of France and forced to have their heads shaved publicly as punishment. Whether these ritual humiliations were a justified response to genuine far-right collaborators or whether these women were scapegoats forced to pay public penance for the crimes of Vichy France is a question that remains open to the audience, but Miller shows empathy for the women captured through her lens and asserts that they are not to blame for the lies spoken by German soldiers. 

Another example is found when Miller accompanies Allied forces into the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps, where she finds female prisoners hiding from American soldiers. When Miller first approaches, a young girl cowers in fear, assuming Miller is a man, and only calms when Miller pulls her hair down. Back in the safety of London, when Withers says that she cannot publish the photographs taken at the camps because “people need to move on,” Miller exclaims, “This little girl in a death camp, raped and beaten, how does she move on?” (The images were later published by Vogue in a 1945 article titled “Believe It.”) The camera lingers on these photographs, of piles of bodies and skeletal remains, before pushing in on Miller’s traumatized face. Lee highlights how unflinching Miller was in her determination to provide an eyewitness account of the crimes committed at the camps, a goal that wasn’t shared by the Prime Minister who forbade the publication of Miller’s more confronting photographs in British Vogue. Kuras is determined to acknowledge those who suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime and the second-hand complicity of publications who refused to bear witness.

It feels impossible to watch a film about the legacy of a war photographer without being reminded of the threat against photojournalists today. Lee spends so much time pondering on memory and legacy: How will Miller be remembered, both by her family and the public? How will the victims and survivors of the war be remembered? How will their memory be preserved? As the lives of journalists seem more at threat than ever—the International Federation of Journalists reports that over 100 journalists were killed and 400 imprisoned in 2023 alone—these questions feel urgent in a world where the press is routinely and deliberately targeted in war zones. It was only due to Antony’s efforts to preserve his mother’s work, and therefore her memory, that Miller became known globally as a prolific war journalist in the late 20th century, an achievement of conservation that seems increasingly impossible in the digital age where the work of journalists is disappearing at an alarming pace.

Lee lingers in the minutiae of war, sitting in the periphery of direct action to capture the endurance of women during World War II. It is thanks to Miller’s determination to document history through her photographs that some of the more intimate aspects of the Second World War are now remembered. For all its sentimentality in the quiet moments, Kuras’ film captures the dangers of being a war journalist and the importance of documenting history so as to provide indisputable evidence of unthinkable crimes. By dramatically intertwining the struggles of Miller’s life with those of the women she encountered, Lee continues Miller’s mission to document the hardships faced by women during World War II.

Director: Ellen Kuras
Writer: Liz Hannah, Marion Hume, John Collee
Starring: Kate Winslet, Josh O’Connor, Andrea Riseborough, Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard
Release Date: September 27, 2024

Nadira Begum is a freelance film critic and culture writer based in the UK. To see her talk endlessly about film, TV, and her love of vampires, you can follow her on Twitter (@nadirawrites) or Instagram (@iamnadirabegum).