Lee | Review | The Film Blog

That same year Kirsten Dunst took her name as a tribute to Alex Garland civil warSeminal mid-century photojournalist Lee Miller gets the biopic treatment courtesy of Ellen Kuras’ directorial short of the same title. Set between 1937 and ’45, bookended by a flirtation with ’77, Took Charts Miller’s journey to the heart of World War II and his excavation of the damage caused. His images are as influential now as they ever were. If not so extraordinary in its own execution, the film deserves credit for the pains it takes by emphasizing why Miller alone could have taken them.

For the same purposes, Took Its survival is largely owed to the herculean efforts of a clearly emotional Kate Winslet, who leads the film as Miller herself. The eight-year production, including two weeks in which Winslet was paid a salary, is a daunting feat. Given such a lengthy production process, one might hope that the film has acquired a strong footing under the skin of its subject. And yet, despite Winslet’s remarkable visibility throughout the film – she’s really great – her Miller feels overly performative. TookLee is tart, damaged, and deceptively intuitive, but rooting for a good actor is more nonsense than character study.

Maybe this is some of the issue. Certainly, Josh O’Connor’s framing interviewer struggles to break the shell. Inquired about the role and significance of her photographs, the 1977 Miller offers only dismissal. They are just pictures. Suggests far less than a trip forty years ago. Passing through an active war zone cannot be limited to just taking pictures. In fact, our first look at the young Miller finds him staggering in St. Malo, above debris and against a backdrop of highly active dust. A claustrophobic soundscape pulls Miller’s rapid breathing into sharp focus, punctuated by pounding heartbeats. The fear is clear on his face. There is no doubt as to what lengths she will go to capture the visual reality of the changing world around her.

Kuras takes us even further back. Back to the sun-drenched era, or so it seemed to Miller and his band of Parisian artist amigos, and a world teetering on the brink of the Second Great War. A topless controversy with future husband, Roland Penrose, leads Miller to London and the doors of British Vogue. Recruited as a war photographer, after first modeling on the other side of the lens, Lee’s travels across the continent are driven more by her sheer force of nature than the whims of an old establishment. There she would unite with fellow photojournalist David Sherman, a Jew in Hitler’s Europe and portrayed influentially by Andy Sandberg in his dramatic debut. It is Sherman’s Buchenwald and Dachau experiences, presented so honestly by Sandberg, that gives the film its most powerful example. His reaction to Miller’s now infamous bathtub shoot – taken unknowingly in Hitler’s own apartment and after his death – was the film’s most wicked.

Sandberg isn’t the only famous face recruited into the passion project, but she’s the only one who shines. Certainly, Winslet’s totemic presence casts a shadow here. Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough and Alexander Skarsgård each popped up, dressed up for the odd brief appearance, yet got very little to do. Skarsgård, most of all, feels lost, compounded by a terrible plug for a British accent. Riseborough goes for plummy breaks as eccentric Vogue editor Audrey Withers, while Cotillard barely registers as her French counterpart Solange d’Eon. It is the smaller, less showy, roles that ground the piece, such as Miller’s conversation with a seriously wounded soldier in the American tent hospital. She can barely hide her terror, he just wants to see how funny he looks. There is dirt there.

Interestingly, little time is given to the impact the war years had on Miller’s life. These were years of declining mental health and devastating PTSD. The somewhat awkward late-act exchange provides a very brief insight into the childhood trauma that Miller carried with him until his dying days. Such hints point to the serious mindset with which Winslet approached her performance, without overshadowing its dramatic resonance in the wider film. Took A Remarkable Life depicts remarkable events, but never finds a compelling narrative to carry them forward. A little less prestige, a little more dirt under the nails, and Miller’s own humanistic insight would have worked wonders in this case.

Tea