Reel Rundown: Clunky dialogue, dramatics plague ‘Lee’
Lee Miller is a name that doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue. Or memory, for that matter.
But for a time, Miller was something of a celebrity. During the late 1920s, for example, she was a widely sought-after fashion model whose face and figure graced the covers of magazines such as Vogue.
Following her modeling period, Miller turned to photography. And as documented in the film “Lee,” directed by Ellen Kuras and starring Kate Winslet, her greatest feat in her new career field came during her time as a war correspondent during World War II.
(Released theatrically in September, “Lee” is now available to rent or buy through several streaming services.)
What Kuras’ movie also documents is that Miller was no ordinary women. Certainly she was not someone who was content to follow the social standards of her day. “I was born determined,” Winslet-as-Miller proclaims, meaning – at least in part – that she was going to do what she wanted.
As is typical in such biographical movie studies, though, such attitudes tend to come at a price – especially for women. And, it seems, the price was especially high for Miller.
Director Kuras, working from a team-written script, focuses mostly on the years just before, during and after the war. She begins by plunging us into a street battle, with Miller dodging bullets in a beleaguered French village. Then she shifts time and space when, years later, Miller is being interviewed by a young man (played by Josh O’Connor).
Ultimately, Miller’s struggle – involving both her unwillingness to conform to societal expectation and with the trauma of witnessing the horrors of war – wears her down. Yet Kuras, following the screenplay, doesn’t delve deeply into the specifics but merely settles for a number of set dramatic sequences and a twist ending.
What’s worse, that same screenplay is full of clunky dialogue such as “Paris is like a smile with half the teeth missing,” a couple of awkwardly obvious foreshadowings and one case of bad miscasting: Former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Andy Samberg is never convincing as the real-life photographer Davy Scherman.
Other performances are spot on, including a cameo by Marion Cotillard as a woman scarred by wartime imprisonment and by O’Connor as the unnamed interviewer. And some of Kuras’ visuals are powerful (most of the film was shot in Hungary and Croatia.)
Winslet, who won a Best Actress Oscar for the 2008 film “The Reader,” has her moments as well, several of which feature her simply staring off into space. In others, though, she’s either baring her breasts or blithely tossing off one curse word after the next.
The actual Lee Miller, whose biography shows her to have been a complex and intriguing character – one who mingled with some of the great names of her time – might have done both after watching what Kuras has put onscreen.
Or maybe, depending on her level of determination, she’d just light up another unfiltered cigarette – and smile.