Charley Ross
It’s a masterpiece of a film – here are GLAMOUR’s top 7 ways that Lee establishes itself as more than a war story, and a feminist take on history.
Lee Miller’s story emphasises how difficult it was for women to tell stories during WW2
We watch Lee’s initial struggle to be accepted as a war correspondent, a space that was – as so many were at that time – completely male dominated. Even when she arrived, she is soon told that no women were allowed in press briefings, a warning she promptly ignored.
Of course, her work achieved acclaim for its merciless and authentic take on the realities of war – everyday and otherwise. Early on in the film, she takes a picture of a female military officer’s underwear hanging in her window, a demonstration of daily life at war.
“Only a woman could’ve taken these photos,” Lee’s Vogue editor Audrey Withers (played by Andrea Riseborough) argued when her male counterpart tried to stop Lee’s photos from being published. And she was right. The film makes a constant case for the importance of different voices telling important stories – and the ways that women were, and continue to be, stopped from doing so.
But the film also demonstrates the ways that the war effort empowered women
Although there were still certainly parts of wartime life that women were kept out of, Lee also demonstrates the ways in which women stepped up during the war, taking over men’s jobs and shifting the script on what post-war world would look like, seeing as many women did not want to go back to a solely domestic life.
Before leaving for France, Lee is keen to document the ways in which women stepped into the workforce, and documents women’s efforts on the frontlines (including flying bomber planes) when she arrives as a correspondent.
Kimberley French/Sky
It zones in on violence against women and girls, through the lens of war
Alongside the horrors of combat, Lee doesn’t shy away from the reality of violence against women and girls during wartime. Lee discovers a woman being raped by an American soldier on the streets of Paris, and fights to stop him, giving the woman her knife telling her to “chop it off” if she is attacked again.