I have a new entry for my Movies You Might Not Know list.
In 2015, I interviewed Lynsey Addario on my radio show. She was a war photographer who spent most of this century in some very dangerous places (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, the Congo, and Libya) taking pictures for the NY Times, National Geographic, Time magazine, and more. You can listen to our conversation here.
At the time, Addario was the only war photographer I’d ever heard of. But I just watched “Lee,” a biopic about Lee Miller, who did that job during World War II, taking pictures that not only recorded history but also made it.
After several years as a fashion model, Miller moved to the other side of the camera and worked as a photographer for the French edition of Vogue. When Hitler started his rampage across Europe, she convinced her editor to let her leave the world of fashion behind and instead make a visual record of the war. She began by getting shots of British cities that had been bombed by Hitler’s Luftwaffe during The Blitz, but eventually embedded with American troops and captured their stories, as well as those of French resistance fighters.
Among the historic moments Miller captured were the first photos of wartime use of napalm and, later, graphic images of murdered prisoners at the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. Those photos were shocking to a world that hadn’t seen Hitler’s murderous brutality in print.
“Lee” was a passion project for its star, Kate Winslet, who spent eight years getting it made and is nothing short of brilliant as the title character. Like Miller’s pictures, Winslet has the ability to convey emotions without saying a word. Credit director Ellen Kuras for allowing the star’s face to reflect the horrors her character witnessed.
The story is told in flashbacks, with an older Miller telling her son, Antony, about her adventures — and the post-traumatic stress she suffered after returning home from the war. Like Miller, Winslet was not afraid to be seen with dirt in her hair and grit on her face, the same conditions the soldiers faced. The result is a moving saga of a woman whose name should be more well-known.
The strong supporting cast includes Alexander Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough, and Andy Samberg. The latter really surprised me because I wasn’t a fan of his prior work (e.g. “Saturday Night Live,” “Brooklyn 99,” “Popstar: Never Stop Not Stopping”), but in “Lee,” he gives a very good, purely dramatic performance as another American war photographer, Davy Scherman.
I’m sorry I didn’t see “Lee” when it was released in 2023, but glad I finally caught up with it so I can add it to my Movies You Might Not Know list.