An unchallenging film about Lee Miller, model, photographer and journalist.
Some great acting and fantastic action cinematography but I had hoped that a film about an iconoclast like Lee Miller might have been a little more radical.
Lee has superb acting, particularly by Kate Winslett in the title role, ably supported by Josh O'Connor, Alexander Skarsgard and Andy Samberg. The cinematography, especially in the wartime actions scenes, is superb. But I was a little disappointed by the story. It wasn't so much what it told but what it left out.
The narrative adopted a framing technique: it started, regularly returned to, and ended with a young man asking an elderly Lee (beautifully acted by Kate Winslett) questions about her life and looking through her old photographs. Very near the end it is revealed who this young man is. I'd guessed some time before.
The story, in effect, started with the second world war (there was a brief prologue in 1938 to show how she met her husband). This meant that her earlier and later careers were scarcely mentioned. She had been a prominent model in 1920s America and a cookery correspondent for British Vogue after the war but most significantly it hardly touched upon her three years in Paris when she was the muse of, assistant to, lover of and collaborator with Man Ray, with whom she developed important techniques in surrealist photography. If you want to know about this aspect of her life, read the novel 'The Age of Light'.
I suspect I know why it focused on the war. It provides the essentially visual cinematic ingredients of drama and action. There are few nuances: it's a story of goodies and baddies, of them and us. It's easy.
I suspect I know why it focused on the war. It provides the essentially visual cinematic ingredients of drama and action. There are few nuances: it's a story of goodies and baddies, of them and us. It's easy.
'Lee' was never a film that wanted to challenge. For example, it made the usual points about how females were disadvantaged in those days by men using the excuse of protection to clip their wings. It's a valid point and one that deserved to be made. But one of the ways in which it did this was to portray the men (except for Lee’s fellow photographer David Scherman played by Andy Samberg) as antagonists. More them and us. Cecil Beaton, who worked with Lee on Vogue, was turned into a silly and slightly bitchy obstruction, his talent unacknowledged. Lee’s second husband, Roland Penrose, was a talented surrealist painter and the founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. His war work, devising camouflage, was dismissed with scorn by Lee as "painting tanks". But it was almost certainly more valuable, saving more lives, than taking photographs which is 'all' that Lee did.
Some great acting and fantastic action cinematography but I had hoped that a film about an iconoclast like Lee Miller might have been a little more radical.
IMdB gave it 6.8/10. Rotten tomatoes scored in 64%. The Guardian starred it 4/5.
Comments
Post a Comment