Lee Miller lived a truly incredible 20th-century life. This year she has already been name-checked in Alex Garland’s film Civil War, but she has always deserved a dedicated big-screen treatment. Kate Winslet’s new biopic Lee, directed by American cinematographer Ellen Kuras, does just that.
The opening shot sees Miller loading up her camera, only to be caught in a blast as soon as she presses the shutter. The relationship between photography and brutality is picked up again later, as we watch her become one of the first photographers to dutifully record the atrocities of the Holocaust. This also reminds us that we continue to rely on the still image as our barometer of truth – as we learn that Miller’s shocking photographs were published under the headline “Believe it”.
The film introduces a framing device of the photographer in her later years being interviewed at home. Casting our eyes over her life’s work, we are sent back to the 1930s to glimpse her time as an artist.
