“3 Good Reasons to See…” Lee, a Biographical Drama Starring Kate Winslet – Urban Bible

To learn the fascinating story of one of the first war correspondents

Lee Miller’s life has not been easy.

Although she managed to go where no woman has dared and lived a professional life punctuated with success, her life was also marked by tragedy.

A rape at the age of seven and the drowning death of her boyfriend, who died before her eyes when she was a teenager, will mark her forever.

Not wishing to let these sad circumstances define her, the young woman decided to leave everything to pursue theater and visual arts studies in Paris in 1925, then in New York in 1926. This is where she was spotted by chance by Condé Nast, the founder of the magazine Vogue. C’This is how she became a model and later posed for the surrealist photographer Man Ray.

The one who already declared: “I’d rather take a photo than be one” however, was not comfortable in this role. So, she decided to open her own photographic studio in 1930.

The American photographer’s life was rather full, and this is why the film focuses more specifically on the period during which she became one of the first female war correspondents in history.

We discover her during a vacation in France, a few months before the start of the Second World War, while she is having a good time in the company of her friends Paul Éluard (Vincent Colombe), his wife Nusch Éluard (Noémie Merlant) and Solange D’Ayen (Marion Cotillard), the publishing director of Vogue in France, and she meets the love of her life, Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård), a British painter, photographer and poet.

They all carefreely enjoy the little pleasures of life, without suspecting what awaits them…

Winslet, through her role, presents us with a modern woman, very often with a cigarette in her lips and a glass of whiskey in her hand, and who prioritizes her career above all else.

Lee Miller refuses to be told “no”, and his undeniable strength of character will allow him, during the war of 1939-1945, to go to the front, one of the many places dominated by men and forbidden to women at that time. era.

She will thus be able to witness the attacks and bear witness to the atrocities committed by the Nazis thanks to reports (photographs accompanied by texts) which she will send to Audrey Whiters (Andrea Riseborough), the editor-in-chief of the British edition of the magazine Vogue.

She will thus become one of the first to have immortalized images of the death camps with her sidekick, the magazine’s photographer LifeDavid E. Scherman (Andy Samberg).

While many photographers were more interested in the soldiers and the devastation, Lee Miller preferred to capture images of the suffering and fear experienced by the victims of this conflict, and more specifically by the women and children whose the story would surely have been forgotten.

Despite everything, she must fight to have her photographs published, deemed too disturbing for the public. For this American photographer, it was essential that people see the horror of this war and remember the acts committed by the Nazi regime.

The feature film ends with the end of the war; it does not dwell on Lee’s difficult return to “normal” life. She remains terribly affected by the post-traumatic stress disorder she inherited during her work at the front.

She then sinks into depression and drowns her sorrows in alcohol…

To be amazed once again by Kate Winslet’s acting talent

In addition to playing the lead role of Lee Miller, the British actress also acts as producer for the very first time in her career.

During the numerous interviews she gave to promote the film, she explained, among other things, that she already knew Lee Miller’s work very well and that she was rather surprised that no film had yet been made about it. this “incredible lady with phenomenal courage”.

That said, it is clear that this project was really close to his heart. The passion with which she speaks about it shows that she made this film for the right reasons. His deep admiration for this woman “tenacious” pushed her to want to share her incredible story with the whole world.

“It’s not a war film; it’s a film about a woman who looked behind the curtain and into the cracks, and saw the suffering of children and women […]» she declared in an interview on The Kelly Clarkson Show.

Leeit is a long-term project for the actress who devoted no less than nine years of her life so that the feature film could finally see the light of day. She even reportedly paid the salaries of the actors and crew for two weeks to counter the difficulties surrounding its financing!

“It was a real adventure, a battle even. It was a long process having to get all the funding together. As a woman, it’s very difficult to make films about other women, but you have to do it […]» said Kate Winslet in an interview with The One Show.

In the lead role, Kate Winslet is simply perfect. She manages to embody a woman with a complex and nuanced character. She is both tough and tender, she worries about the fate of the citizens trapped among the bombs, and she makes sure to do her job as best as she can despite the difficulties she must overcome.

Her desire for justice encourages her to push the limits, and she does not hesitate to put her life in danger in the hope of showing the tragic consequences of this terrible war.

Although the other actors and actresses in the cast are all adept in front of the camera, Kate Winslet’s performance is the one that stands out. The critics all seem to agree on one thing: she is simply fantastic as Lee Miller!

Winslet, who previously won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2009 for her role in The Reader (2008), delivers here a performance that could very likely earn him a nomination at next year’s prestigious awards gala.

Throughout her career, the latter has shown daring by choosing to interpret strong and complex women on screen. These choices, which represent a real challenge as an actress, could certainly have harmed her, but they instead succeeded in highlighting her undeniable talent.

Whether in Titanicwhere she convincingly plays Rose, a young upper-class woman who rebels and falls in love with Jack, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, in Revolutionary Roadwhere she plays the role of a wife and mother overwhelmed by her routine life, or in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mindwhere she plays an impulsive young woman with a melancholic mood, she never disappoints!

To become aware of the scale of the Second World War and its consequences

The Second World War is known as THE deadliest conflict in history. In all, between 50 and 60 million people died and entire populations were decimated.

A touching scene in the film also highlights this sad reality. This is the one that follows the capture of the most famous image of Lee Miller’s career, taken during a visit to Hitler’s private apartment in Munich on April 30, 1945.

On the very day of the Führer’s suicide in his bunker in Berlin, Lee Miller and David E. Scherman, an American photographer and journalist, went to the scene and stopped in the dictator’s bathroom to take a photo that would go mark the imagination, that of the photographer installed in the bathtub of the Nazi leader with, at her side, a portrait of the latter.

When the two photographers left the bathroom, Scherman realized the extent of the tragedy that had affected his people, having been born into a Jewish family himself, and he burst into tears.

Miller and Scherman were among the first to take post-war photographs and show the impact of the conflict on war-affected human beings. Another emotionally charged scene shows them when they have to photograph bodies piled up in wagons…

The smell of decomposing bodies seems overwhelming, but it does not prevent them from boarding to capture the photos that will become the very first to reveal the horror of the camps.

These images still bear witness today to a dark, not-so-distant past that affected the lives of many people.

“Lee” will introduce you to the incredible story of Lee Miller, a historical figure too long forgotten, whose courage and determination allowed her to go beyond the limits imposed on women of her time to bear witness to human suffering inflicted by the deadliest conflict in history. The film is currently showing in several cinemas in Quebec!