PICTURE PERFECT ART

FILM MEETS PHOTOGRAPH IN SUBTLY COMPELLING STORY TELLING STYLE

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The medium frame reflex camera was an instrument of beauty with the gently moving parts that synchronized to produce a work of art, at least from time to time, depending on the person rolling the film through.

Director Ellen Kuras uses the click, shutter and role of the film as a narrative device to tell the story of photographer Lee Miller in Lee (2024).

Scenes are framed in dedication to Lee’s photographic style, that by all accounts was distinctly female, while everyone has to wait, often impatiently, for Kuras to wind the next frame behind the camera lens for the next scene.

Typically, one would have to wait for the prints to be developed to view the art, but the narrative compels everyone forward to the next intimate portrait while the film is still inside the medium format camera.

Kate Winslet is cast in the lead role, with Lee initially trying to make people connections before becoming firmly decided on obtaining work with British Vogue.

Lee’s talent helps her break gender barriers in a time between the Great Wars of the last century when men and women were often segregated, especially in terms of employment and military duties.

The incremental scene progression takes on the aesthetic and intellectual qualities of still photography, creating time to absorb the subject and ponder what might have been going on and what might the subject have been thinking at the time of the composition.

This intimate portraiture on film provides a convenient vehicle for Winslet who moves the character from liberated female with a healthy balance of female and male gender traits to the distinct motivations that created the unique photographic art.

Lee and other female journalists found resistance to them reporting from the live war theater even after the Normandy Invasion.

The character capable of overcoming such a systemic barrier develops through various relationships and career milestones. And then Winslet shows Lee being knocked about, like everyone else, by the shelling and gunfire of the street fighting in the battle for France.

The film turns when Lee and Life Magazine photographer David E. Scherman come across the Holocaust death camps at Dachau and Buchenwald.

The film style is at times too loyal to the narrative device resulting in a scene falling flat every now and then. And a couple of times the script does not quite get everyone to the next scene seamlessly.

Overall though, Kuras has adapted a distinct style to the story that is her own, and therefore avoided a kind of plane reading of another artist’s career highlights.

And Winslet’s acting combined with Miller’s aesthetics, maintains a high level of interest throughout.