The life story of a forgotten prophet and founder of the Shaking Quakers is spellbindingly told in the newest film from Mona Fastvold.
Last year, Mona Fastvold co-wrote the epic film The Brutalist with her husband Brady Corbet to critical acclaim and three Academy Awards, including Best Cinematography, Best Original Score and Best Actor, with the duo also garnering a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination and Corbet himself a consideration for Best Directing. The feminine half of this filmmaking couple tries her own hand in direction with The Testament of Ann Lee, an epic chronicle about the birth of an old English religious sect and the rise of its founder into the stuff of legend, the results of which amount to a riveting epic driven by excellent music and Fastvold’s unique direction.
Taking place at first in 18th century England, The Testament of Ann Lee begins during the titular daughter of a blacksmith’s childhood, which details the beginning of her fascination with the divine starting in church pews and frequent Bible reading, as well her questioning of the Church of England’s concerns with rituals upon witnessing a Quaker’s sermon, in addition to the traumatizing experience of accidentally witnessing her parents having intercourse. Now as an adult, Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried) is looking to live in harmony with her faith in God as well as England’s religious establishment, and along with her brother William (Lewis Pullman) finds that in the Shakers, a more radical spinoff of the non-violent Quaker denomination, characterized by the unorthodox dancing and screaming they perform during acts of worship.
During this period, Ann Lee marries blacksmith Abraham Standarin (Christopher Abbott) and over four years, gives birth to four children, all of whom pass away within a year of life. The unbearability of such tragedies drives Ann Lee into converting her trauma into evangelism to the point where she believes the death of her children are God’s judgment upon her. She returns to the Shakers, declares herself as the female equivalent to Jesus Christ, citing that “God must be both male and female”, proposes her tribe take a vow of celibacy to retain and restore their spiritual strength, and suggests along with her second-in-command Mary Partington (Thomasin MacKenzie) that they voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to the newly formed American colonies to spread their own messages of peace and build utopia on earth in their commune.
The Testament of Ann Lee is a mesmerizing watch for a multitude of reasons, the first one being the stellar efforts from its lead actress. Amanda Seyfried was trained in opera during her humble beginnings, and those on top of her experiences on 2008’s Mamma Mia! and 2012’s Les Miserables have brought her to a career-best performance here. She wears the Shaker matriarch’s convictions in every scene, whether she’s listening to her congregation with deep empathy, or injecting great longing emotion during the film’s musical numbers. Even the first shot of Seyfried as Ann Lee feels reminiscent of a painting while she, her fellow seamstresses and Shakers dance to themselves in a lavish ballroom. She is both hypnotized and hypnotizing.
The musical scenes in The Testament of Ann Lee are equally beguiling; composer Daniel Blumberg took songs from traditional Shaker spirituals and implements a spiritual grandeur into their instrumentation, while their lyrics amount to sheer poetry such as the way ‘Hunger And Thirst’ beautifully uses alliteration to let us inside the mind of Ann Lee in her most private moments. Even the dance choreography is hauntingly in sync with the percussion of Blumberg’s score, and his renditions of these hymns such as ‘Beautiful Treasures’ fade out one element at a time until all that remains is a single, screeching violin loop to showcase Ann Lee’s strife.
As director, the one aesthetic choice Mona Fastvold makes similar to her husband Brady Corbet is a muted color palette. Otherwise, her filmmaking voice in The Testament of Ann Lee adds a grand magnitude to Ann Lee’s life story, from beautiful shot compositions that evoke 18th century paintings and kinetic camera movements (like a 360 degree rotation which follows the gaggle of Shakers as they move across the frame with the camera), to smash cuts back and forth between the summer and winter seasons as the troupe performs a canticle while on a ship, and even birds-eye angles of these worshippers’ dances, highlighting the unique shapes their connections form. Community is the theme at the center of Testament’s ambitions as a film, and Fastvold celebrates the Shakers and what they were able to build with enchanting beauty.
However, The Testament of Ann Lee does lose some steam shortly after her clan finds their home on America’s East Coast, in part because Fastvold and Corbet’s script decides to pivot their exploration toward the Shaker movement as a whole rather than its enigmatic leader. This choice, along with the combination of less conflict and musical numbers, leaves the film’s second half without the same wonder as its immaculate start, but that’s also because no one else in this supporting cast neither holds a candle to the enormity that Seyfried brings to the screen, nor has a compelling secondary story.
But the positives of Fastvold’s third feature film far outweigh the issues, and The Testament of Ann Lee justifies its existence as a spellbinding chronicle of a near-extinct spiritual faction. Audiences will be captivated by the dazzling musical numbers, learn interesting details about the Shakers, and recognize Seyfried’s enrapturing performance on their path toward endearment to Ann Lee as a singular figure. Even when all feels lost for her, the twinkles in Seyfried’s eyes emit the only light in some frames, creating a special kind of movie magic. It’s in that union between performer and artist where The Testament of Ann Lee shines the brightest.