Lee (2024)

Once again Sky Original are getting involved in big screen releases, bankrolling this war drama that tells that astonishing tale of Lee Harper, an American model turned photographer who became a war correspondent during World War II for Vogue magazine.

Harper's flamboyant attitude to alcohol, sex, and enjoying the finer things in life ("drinking, fucking and taking photographs") are covered early on as the film initially plays out like a romantic drama, bringing to mind Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash as Lee spends time with her friends (including a brief turn from Marion Cotillard) and meets Alexander Skarsgard's Roland who she eventually marries. Kate Winslet, as ever, is fantastic in the titular role, bringing vitality to the film's eye opening point of view; a woman's first hand account of war and its aftermath, frequently from the front line.

We begin with Lee as an old woman, being interrogated by Josh O'Connor's younger man at her home, desperately trying to pull some stories from her with Lee being initially prickly and hard work to coax anything from. But it becomes very clear why especially in the film's second half- Lee has seen things that are beyond our understanding, visions that we couldn't even begin to imagine in our worst nightmares. When it finally dawns that Harper was one of the first civilians to bear witness to the atrocities of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau, the film dips into bleakness that one couldn't have imagined in the film's uneven and tonally suspect first hour. Andy Samberg is on fine form as Lee's friend and colleague, Life magazine photographer David Scherman, and we truly believe in the pair's friendship throughout what becomes a horrific journey into the rubble of Munich. Visually these scenes are particularly impressive; not surprising when you consider first time director Ellen Kuras cut her teeth as a cinematographer. The sequence in Hitler's Munich apartment (which actually took place, on the day Hitler killed himself) is effectively uncomfortable; it's here in particular that we fully understand Lee's dedication to depict the horrors on display to the rest of the world- something that we later find out was much harder than you might imagine. Although not on a par with other more substantial depictions of war, and certainly inconsistent in its first half, Kuras film is a welcome addition to the military biopic sub-genre, and it's without doubt a story that needs to be told. Before the final credits roll we learn a little more about how Lee's story eventually got to us, and it's truly remarkable. Add Winslet's towering performance to the mix, with terrific support from Samberg and Andrea Riseborough, and Lee becomes far more than a footnote to the bountiful supply of true life war stories brought to our big screens. 7.4/10