Kate Winslet is Spectacular and Raw in Lee

A few years back, Lucy Lawless premiered her screen debut with a documentary focused on CNN photojournalist Margaret Moth, who survived being shot in the face in Sarajevo only to succumb to cancer in 2010.

However, many decades before Moth there was Lee Miller. Miller’s work as a correspondent for European Vogue during WW II brought an important female perspective to the news, even as the horrors that she witnessed opened her own chasms of trauma.

“Lee was a woman who lived her life on her terms and she paid a horrific emotional price for all of it,” Winslet told me. “I wanted to tell the story of a flawed middle- aged woman who went to war and documented it.”

Based on Anthony Penrose’s (Miller’s son) “The Lives of Lee Miller,” Lee illustrates the courage of women going into war zones where they weren’t wanted, embraced or welcomed during World War II.  She had more nerve and grit than the majority of her colleagues at the time, including close friend and confidante David E. Scherman, portrayed beautifully by former Saturday Night Live regular Andy Samberg.

Samberg, co-star Andrea Riseborough (Miller’s Vogue editor Audrey Withers), Alexander Skarsgård and Marion Cotillard coupled with Winslet provide a cinematic dream team of performances.  Each one carefully crafted and expertly executed make this film fascinating to screen, while highlighting a life and career that has nearly been erased from history.

Even more fascinating is Pawel Edelman’s photography, which is gorgeous and emotionally evocative creating images totally devoid of glamour associated with the era to perfectly convey the energy associated with war zones and Europe at that time..  Many of Miller’s photograph’s were recreated with the exact replica of camera angles, shots and Rolleiflex box camera used by Winslet to shoot in real time.

One of the most riveting recreations was a famous photo of Miller in Dachau on April 30, 1945 after Hitler and Eva Braun had taken their lives. She posed in his tub with a photo of the dictator in the background, an image that speaks louder than any dialogue could ever convey.

This was a woman shooting in Normandy when women weren’t allowed, spent the early part of her career as a model and ultimately emerged as one of the most quietly impressive