Time and again, we’ve seen that trying to smash the entirety of a life—especially that of a notable person—into the running time of a feature film is a fool’s errand, resulting in puddle-deep characterization, painfully expositional dialogue and narratives that offer little more than bullet points. But these movies win Oscars, so financiers see them as something resembling a low risk, and here we are. “Lee,” the narrative directorial debut of acclaimed cinematographer Ellen Kuras, stars Kate Winslet as WWII combat photographer Lee Miller, first seen snapping a picture during a firefight before getting knocked over by an explosion.
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The title fades in among the clouds of smoke, and we cut ahead to 1977, where Miller is now a senior citizen and cantankerous interview subject. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing; they’re just pictures,” she tells her would-be chronicler (Josh O’Connor) dismissively, but with a minimum of pressing, she tells her story. It essentially begins in France, circa 1938, where Miller, a former model turned photographer, was, in her words, “good at drinking, having sex, and taking pictures— and I did all three as much as I could.” The fiercely independent shutterbug goes to work for the London bureau of “Vogue” in the early days of WWII, and the bulk of the action occurs in the years that follow.
Miller is certainly a worthwhile subject but deserves better than this maddeningly pedestrian screenplay, which is credited to four different writers and feels like it. Among their most unfortunate choices is capping the framing device of the big interview with a pair of surprise twists that are just patently false, emotionally and narratively; they also lean way too hard on the move-it-along narration, which is filled with bland lines like “I was born determined, and I’d never felt more alive” and “Liberation: the word was as joyous as it felt.”
The gifted Winslet, who is also among the producers, is required to perform such feats of narrative whiplash that she feels less like a character (or an actor) than a traffic cop. She, of course, gets her Oscar clips: a dramatic breakdown when she discovers that her work has been suppressed, followed immediately by a heartfelt confession of childhood abuse, a double feature of the kind of Big Acting that Oscar just loves. She generates some heat with Alexander Skarsgård as her main squeeze, even in the face of some mighty turgid dialogue, and Andrea Riseborough is as reliable as ever as her supportive editor. But Marion Cotillard is egregiously underused, and Andy Samberg is direly miscast as fellow photojournalist David Scherman, sporting a New England accent with all the consistency of a 12:45 “SNL” sketch and a contemporary sensibility that keeps him aloof in most of his scenes. And, disappointingly, Alexandre Desplat’s score is a sappy, twinkly, push-button affair.
There are good scenes here and there — like a lovely interaction between Miller and an injured soldier who asks her to take his picture (“When I get home and I’m all handsome, I want my girl to see how brave I was”) — and a climactic stretch of Miller and Scherman riding around in their jeep, taking some of the first photographs of post-War Europe and its grotesque aftermath. Of course, this material makes an impact; it’s just viscerally involving and impossible not to share in their sense of horror and disbelief. It’s easily the most potent chunk of the picture. And one cannot help but note, in making that assessment, that it’s mostly free of dialogue.
The images are immaculate, unsurprisingly, with Kuras and her gifted cinematographer Pawel Edelman making a striking aesthetic contrast between the warmth of her late-in-life country home to the cold gray battlefield and France’s picturesque seasides. But her work here ultimately reminds us how difficult it is for even the best cinematographers to navigate the transition from D.P. to director. For every Mario Bava, there’s a Gordon Willis (“Windows”) or Janusz Kaminksi (“Lost Souls”) or Wally Pfister (“Transcendence”). Like many of those films, “Lee” knows exactly how it wants to look, yet it has little that’s new or interesting to say. [C-]
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