This biopicture gives us an up-close-and-personal account of the life and work of acclaimed photographer Lee Miller (Kate Winslet). In scenes throughout the film, we see her being interviewed as an old woman in her farmhouse. She shows her guest (Josh O’Connor) many of her photographs (the actual photographs by Lee Miller) as she fills in the context around them.
Flashbacks take us to a ten-year period from 1938 to 1948 and the end of World War II. They reveal how she meets her husband, Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgard), whose duties during the war mean they were not together. Having once been a model, Lee had moved on to being a photographer for the American Vogue magazine.
By 1943 Miller had convinced her editor that where she needed to be was on the front lines, taking pictures of what was really happening in the war. As an accredited war photographer, the first woman in that role, she travels with the troops in Paris and Normandy. Most of the time, she is accompanied by Life photographer David Scherman (Andy Samberg).
In one sequence, the two photographers arrive at a liberated Nazi concentration camp. Lee takes pictures of the barracks and stacks of bodies. These pictures were deemed too horrifying to be published in Vogue but eventually became part of her legacy. While inside Hitler’s apartment in Munich, Lee had Scherman photograph her lying in Hitler’s bathtub.
While her photographs certainly deserved widespread attention, Miller herself was often the subject of gossip and speculation. She not only fought for a woman’s right to see the war action directly, she fought to protect the women she met along the way. Having experienced rejection herself, she had empathy for others who were direct and indirect victims of the war.
Lee Miller was recognized for her courage, curiosity, resilience, innovativeness, integrity, vision, tenacity, adaptability, and unwavering passion for photography. Winslet inhabits the role with remarkable authenticity, making these qualities of Lee Miller both believable and admirable.