Ellen Kuras’ film reminds that someone higher up holds the strings to freedom of the press.
This past week, two billionaires, who also own two of the most influential newspapers in the United States, showed that money can buy many things, but it can’t buy courage.
The Washington Post’s motto is “Democracy Dies in the Darkness.” After the Post’s current owner, Jeff Bezos, blocked the Post’s editorial board plans to endorse Kamala Harris for president, in a move widely seen as not wanting to rock the boat against a potential second Trump administration, Democracy went up for sale, and it isn’t even Cyber Monday yet.
Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times since 2018, arguably has more to gain from a Trump presidency since he’s part of big pharma and only worth an estimated $7.1 billion to Bezos’ estimated $177 billion, so maybe it wasn’t as big a surprise when he blocked the Los Angeles Times’ editorial board from also endorsing Harris. Shiong tried unsuccessfully to join Trump’s cabinet in 2017. He did get a Health Information Technology Advisory Committee appointment, so who knows—is that an acceptable consolation prize? Perhaps he’ll do better if things work out for him on Nov. 5.
The most exciting aspects of Ellen Kuras’ debut feature “Lee” lie in finding out just how free that precious freedom of the press actually is. For the better part of her career, one that’s currently into its fourth decade, Kuras may be familiar to most cinema-going audiences for her cinematography work, from her “fly on the wall” cinematography of “Unzipped” to her eye-popping visuals in Spike Lee’s “Summer of Sam” and “Bamboozled” to her acclaimed work on “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”
In 2008, Kuras began branching out into directing work, where she’s helmed episodes of many popular television shows and series like “Ozark,” “The Umbrella Academy,” “Catch-22,” and “Inventing Anna.” It’s little surprise, then, that for her first feature film, Kuras would turn her attention to the life and times of renowned American female war photographer Lee Miller.
Miller, played by Kate Winslet, is a decade or so older than the real Miller was during the bulk of the film’s focus, and that age difference is somewhat of a distraction. Still, we’ve seen male actors do this in biopics for decades, and no one seems to bat an eyelash, so I am more than willing to take the journey. And it’s Kate Winslet, people. She’s a professional and one of the best in the business, so lead on, Kate.
Things get off to a sluggish start. The film serves audiences a tired plot device: a young man played by Josh O’Connor (you know, Prince Charles from “The Crown,”) interviewing an aged Lee Miller at the end of her life. There is some unspoken mystery in these conversations, which the film cuts back to several times during the movie, that pay off in the end, but a more successful film would have handled things differently. The payoff isn’t that great and certainly not worth the investment of this plot convention. The opening 25 minutes of the movie feel both too long and too short at the same time. The story is begging to get to the good stuff, and the first 25 minutes serve as an awkward introduction to Lee Miller’s life at the onset of WW2. We meet her friends and eventual husband, but it’s a light establishment here. Either skip all of this or give the audience a richer introduction to who Lee Miller is. If the remainder of the film is a journey devoted to showing how the horrors of the war shape and change a person, a film audience needs to know who that person is at the beginning. And that is not something clearly defined in “Lee.”
I couldn’t help wondering if there was a longer film here. The movie is a tight two hours, and in today’s film-going, that feels about a half hour shorter than one typically gets in a biopic. It’s as if a test screening audience found an original cut with a more expansive beginning that is too long and itchy to get the action moving faster. And what is left is a film that feels like snapshots of life instead of a complete picture of who Lee Miller was.
The good news is that once these first 25 minutes flicker past the screen, the movie picks up and is never dull. Kuras tells a story of Lee’s time working for Vogue magazine as a photographer and war correspondent, and it’s an interesting angle, showing the male-dominated hypocrisy of the era, where freedom of the press and the right to cover a story pretty much belonged to a white man. Winslet’s Lee Miller fights for every opportunity to ply her craft, with her trusty 120-film Rolleiflex twin reflex camera always in tow. Interesting side note: a 120-film Rolleiflex camera takes 12 shots. This film never bothers to show Miller loading or unloading the film, and these little details add up. The authenticity of the craft is a small thing, but in films like “Lee,” their absence matters.
However, where Kuras’ expertise as a cinematographer pays off is the recreation of some of Lee Miller’s most famous photographs during WW2. Those unfamiliar with the work of Lee Miller before this film might not connect these moments in the movie to her portfolio. An ending montage during the closing credits confirms what I suspected during the movie, and once more, I think there were more interesting screenwriting choices that would have enhanced the experience. When you finally see these images, what does pay off is how well Kuras set these moments up and composed them on screen. One particularly stunning scene in the movie has Winslet’s Miller and photographer partner Davy Scherman, played by Andy Samberg in a dramatic role here, staying in Hitler’s abandoned apartment at the end of WW2. Miller composes a shot in Hitler’s bathtub, and the moment displays the brilliance of Miller’s photographic eye and shot composition, and that of director Kuras in recapturing it.
Where the film ultimately finds its power is not in showing the brutality of war and the havoc and chaos left in the wake of an unchecked dictator who once tried to overthrow his government, got jailed for that crime, was released from prison early, and forgiven by his people with his past crimes seemingly forgotten, who then rose back to power, seized control of the government through lies and fake promises, asked for all-encompassing power by his country, was given it, and then nearly destroyed all of Europe in the process, all while killing millions. No, that story is cursory in this film and does serve as a backdrop, but what was chillingly on point for a story set 80 years ago is Lee Miller’s struggle to achieve freedom of the press.
There is always a gatekeeper. For Lee Miller, military war censors stopped specific photos from making it past the front lines and back to the publisher, so she had to censor her image compositions. Then, there is Miller’s publisher, Vogue magazine. They decide what they will and won’t print, and when Lee Miller dares to show the true horror of the Holocaust, European Vogue won’t print the evidence. They offer that tired old phrase, “The people just want to forget. They might get upset by what they see.”
This part of the movie resonates and hits home. What truths are we not allowed to see and learn about today? In a society where 24-hour news bombards us, what news doesn’t make it that might make a difference or the people should know? When billionaire owners of the news get to decide what the people who make those news outlets can say, do, endorse, not endorse, keep silent, and sit on the sidelines, even when the very state of democracy is on the line, what does freedom of the press even mean? So, while “Lee” isn’t a complete success or as successful a film as it could be, there is a powerful message that comes across loud and clear.
“Lee” is in theaters and available on demand.
James Kent is the publisher’s assistant at The Mountain Times and the co-host of the “Stuff We’ve Seen” podcast at stuffweveseen.com. If you have a film or television show you’d like him to review, please email him at editor@mountaintimes.info.
