For quite some time now, Kate Winslet has been inspiring Lee Miller’s creativity. Long before the release of the biopic on American war correspondent and photographer Lee Miller, the oscar and emmy award-winning actress got in touch with Tony Penrose, son of Lee and Roland Penrose. For some reason she wanted to know why nobody had ever made a film about his remarkable mother. Penrose let her know that many had attempted, and that there was an entire boxful of screenplays in the attic of potential movies that went nowhere. Penrose would suggest that the writers ‘did not quite get her’ when he was referring to his mother Penrose.
Winslet did. And by the time, Ellen Kuras joined the team, it was obvious that the director of the said production was going to do quite well. Ellen Kuras is a cinematographer who has received awards and recognition including for her pictures of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Summer of Sam, The Betrayal. Here, she does creativity as she brings out an early twentieth century atmosphere more so the late 1940s and a numbing soreness which makes this film at times feel like a fever dream which works to its advantage since screenwriters Liz Hannah, Marion Hume, and John Collee do not avoid the typical biopic structure.
Fabulously, Kate Winslet is in charge of the work and she does not fail to deliver. Mare of Easttown and The Regime‘s star radiates since she embodies all shades of Miller- a fierce photographer and a woman with strong opinion who most of the times behaved with cold temperament. This utterly involving picture features also Josh O’Connor (Players) as Prince Charles, Andrea Riseborough (The Regime) as Margaret Thatcher, Alexander Skarsgård (Big Little Lies) as Magnus and Marion Cotillard (Inception) and Andy Samberg who plays an underappreciated role as David E. Scherman, the colleague of Miller.
Writers Liz Hannah, Marion Hume and John Collee transform that embrace into screen screenplay something more than what is by the book in Lee. Hannah, the executive producer of The Dropout and showrunner of The Girl from Plainville limited series, which is brilliant in every sense, is the best collaborator for Hume, whose documentary Capturing Lee Miller provides good grounds to build this story. Collee, the authorship of Monkey Man, is the scriptwriter who knows in what way to excite the audience – by means of stimulating in any other way.
Kuras describes Lee with great pleasure as purposeful, simple and uncomplicated. As a further contributing factor to Kuras’s cinematic gaze and the overall goodness of Winslet’s search for the project, let’s add the fact that there are no small details. One of the things that makes this most recent outing all the more credible is that the material was taken from the biography inspired by Lee Miller’s life written by her son, Antony Penrose. Also brought into the picture were Miller’s private archives. It is quite hard to imagine the amount of research and effort which went in making the movie, and it is a good thing that it all works.
While still in the developing years, we hear Lee say: “I was very good at my post, and it was three simple things: to drink, to make love and to take pictures. And all these I did in excess.” This was during an interview with an aspiring journalist, played by Josh O’Connor, where he was asking Lee all the right questions and he not too shyly answers them. Here Lee comes across as bold, a bit abrupt and absolutely bored with telling readers her story and seeing what the fuss is for.
She concedes, of course, and before long, we are zapped back to the past where Miller is gallantly fighting against the odds, trying to be herself instead of a proper girl. A model, then a photographer who gets awfully close to Vogue editor Audrey Withers (Andrea Riseborough). As we quickly move over her affair with the English artist/historian/poet Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård), the actors make their bond as completely formed and convincingly.
At this juncture of the film, which falls towards the end of the second act, Miller has absolute determination to get right in the heart of battle and photograph the world war II. Circumventing a measure which would banish British women in civil attire from the presence of live combat, Miller goes on her journey, accompanied by an unimpeachable Life magazine photojournalist David Scherman (Andy Samberg). It is already the year 1944, and needless to say, it is pretty much everyone and everything is on high alert level with the Nazi regime being a real menace.
Surprisingly, we have here a true couple in the form of Winslet and Samberg, and perhaps one of the best couplings in recent years out of even historical dramas. This is evident with the regard they share for each other. Loosening up Lee’s amour and bolshy imaginings of Lee’s female photographers, we are taken on about her journey, and gritty tales – from the wars in Paris and the horror in Hungary to the war in Munich carrying her Rolleiflex camera and British Vogue s press credentials. The transitions in these movements are also skillfully attempted, especially by backtracking the events to the 1970s when the author peruses the wonderful photographs of Miller.
There are quite a number of scenes which lingers long in one’s mind. For example, the Holocaust snap of Miller and Scherman in succeeding pages and the concentration camp Buchenwald where the tourists engage themselves in is haunting. These journalists preparing to depart the boxcars after surveying the dead bodies are also truly amazing film. Another clip where the two was in Hitler’s apartment after Germany descends, telling the about behind the camera of one of the famous Lee Miller images, the naked photographer in Hitler’s bathtub, and this clicked by Scherman.
After a while, one of the characters accompanies the pain to a degree that it is unfathomable. This cupboard sequence in which Scherman sinks to tears in Miller’s arms is among the best. Here, Miller always seeming solid and unyielding, remains intact with the emotions of the situation. And Samberg, who takes great care and circumspection throughout the film, reaches the zenith of this character.
Except for the orbits and the courtesy-generic biography caption treatment, it is the only movie you must watch this season. Tami winslet, yes, focuses more on the characterization of Miller rather than on Parker. Everything is traced down to her face, the way she looks at people and the way she speaks and even smokes. I’d say this is another great performance that will get some prize. With great actors: Winslet, Skarsgard, Andrea Riseborough, and Samberg, along with the heroine’s historical background, Lee – the woman and the movie, remains in memory forever.
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