Review: Frontline photographer bears witness to WWII horrors and her own trauma – News

Her most famous photo, however, became the staged one in which she sits naked in Adolf Hitler’s bathtub in his Munich apartment at the time of the Nazi leader’s overthrow himself a few hundred kilometers away. The picture expresses how impatient and willing to pay attention to the conventions of the author who took it.

She was Elizabeth “Lee” Miller (1907 – 1977). The free-spirited idea of ​​bohemian art, which became one of the pioneers of war photography and photojournalism. Lee no longer wanted to be seen as a model or shoot, fashion or celebrities as a photographer, but he wanted to give an authentic look at the reality of wartime.

It affected her so much that she struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder after the war. She drank a lot of alcohol, withdrew and tried to forget the world. And with him and those closest to her.

It is also seen in the film’s narrative about her life, when a young reporter (Josh O’Connor) comes to see her at her country house, who wants to interview her. About her experiences and her work.

Cigarette smoke and a glass of brandy in hand, the elderly Lee immerses himself in memories that appear not only when that cheerful and flighty young woman is reborn, enjoying the joys of life with animal energy, into the war correspondent, but also how the phantom wars left their mark forever.

The turning point was the rise of National Socialism in Germany. In the opening, we watch Lee (Kate Winslet) enjoying the company of her artistic friends on the French Riviera. There she meets the art dealer Roland Penrose (Alasdair Skarsgård), with whom she falls in love. In the background of the acquaintances, however, the danger that gradually affects Europe speaks from the film news.

She is already at the front in London, so she decides to bring the news about her directly from the front line battlefields. The British authorities do not want to send her there as a woman, so she passes herself off as a native American. Together with her boyfriend, who works for Life magazine, David Scherman (Andy Samberg), she travels to the front lines and records the horrors of war and the faces of the victims. Often women, forced and humiliated by soldiers, reveal their own childhood trauma, as we learn at the end of the story.

Director Ellen Kuras along with screenwriter Liz Hannah and producer Kate Winslet see the film as a gradual expansion of Lee’s personality. From the colorful life of the main character, they have chosen less than ten years from him, which they consider to be creative to build his personality and the modern view of his meaning.

Symbolically, one could say that Lee, between his thirties and his forties, moves from the sunny south of France to the heart of darkness of the Dachau death camp in the film’s narrative.

The interview she conducts with the reporter has a self-reflective and emotional meaning not only for her, but also for the interviewer, who will gain an identity at the end, which will move the whole process of remembering and coming to terms with her own traumas. to a much more personal and internal family level.

This is related to the author of the original, from which the filmmakers based the film. The Lives of Lee Miller (1985) is by Antony Penrose, son of Roland and Lee. It was only after her death that Antony learned about his mother’s extraordinary history from diaries, letters and negative photographs, which he decided to make available to the public.

He was very helpful in providing materials and personal knowledge to the creative staff who continue to preserve Lee Miller’s legacy. With Kate Winslet as her lead, she does so in an attractive and emotional way for women. The horrors of the war that she records are visible in her face and change her personality to become much more vulnerable as it appears after the war.

After the end of the war, the world does not want to forget all the horrors, but in an effort to move forward, it does not want to remind so much, which Lee is very carrying She still lives with them and can’t get them out of her mind. The film opens up the subject of traumatic experiences, including rape.

The line of redemption is also evident in the film, which is related to the fact that it was edited mostly by women. For documentarian and cameraman Ellen Kurasová, this is her directorial debut, for which she was chosen by Kate Winslet, who worked with her as an actress on the films Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The King’s Gardener.

They surrounded themselves with experienced professionals, such as the composer Alexandre Desplat or the cameraman Paweł Edelman, who create impressive images of the effects of the horrors of the war. Like the liberation of Dachau or when Lee meets her friend Solange in her mansion in Paris, which is a reflection of the suffering she went through during the war.

It wasn’t just Lee’s eyes that saw much during the war. They have become a photographic print of history, which comes alive here even with its terrible effects. The director pays tribute to her strong efforts to bear witness to the experience in which Lee Miller found her.