‘The Testament Of Ann Lee’ review: Amanda Seyfried is 18th-century preacher in audacious musical

Dir: Mona Fastvold. UK. 2025. 136mins

The story of Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), an eighteenth-century feminine preacher and the founding father of the Shaker motion, is explored by means of the medium of the musical on this distinctive however uneven historic oddity by Mona Fastvold. A splinter group from the Quakers, the Shakers (or Shaking Quakers) have been distinguished by a perception in celibacy and communal residing, plus an method to worship that concerned singing, dancing and usually flailing about – all of which is integrated into the image. It’s a daring stylistic system, however one which could have labored higher if the characters have been extra satisfyingly developed, and the story itself was eventful sufficient to help the movie’s overlong operating time.

An uncommon and daring work

The most recent directorial outing from Norwegian filmmaker Fastvold, The Testomony Of Ann Lee, which premieres in Venice competitors, must be an merchandise of curiosity because it follows her spectacular frontier lesbian drama The World To Come and her contribution to The Brutalist, which she co-wrote together with her accomplice Brady Corbet. They collaborate as soon as once more on this image – Corbet is a co-writer – however early hypothesis concerning the movie’s awards potential could show to be unfounded. 

Ann Lee lacks the stylistic bravura and beneficiant epic sweep of The Brutalist, and, not like one thing like Emilia Perez, its musical numbers lack the vary, selection and toe-tapping immediacy required to sear a music into the viewers’s consciousness. Nonetheless, divisive as it’ll seemingly show to be, Ann Lee is an uncommon and daring work, and may earn as many supporters because it does detractors.

It’s not simply the choice to inform the story as a musical which is an audacious and sudden selection, but in addition the method to the cinematography. To the uninitiated, the Shaker motion is greatest identified not for the uninhibited nature of its spiritual fervour, however for its cabinetry. Unshowy and restrained, Shaker craftsmanship is the apogee of concord between type and performance (solely barely devalued by being adopted as advertising and marketing shorthand for a sort of mass-produced fitted kitchen).

It’s an method that Fastvold might need woven into her filmmaking. But the construction and cinematography may barely be much less classically ‘Shaker’ in its method. Moderately than inventive precision, Fastvold as a substitute takes as an inspiration the feverish, uninhibited depth of Shaker worship, with the digicam (like The Brutalist, Ann Lee was shot on 70mm movie) tossed round amid flailing hair and exultant arms held aloft.

Divided into chapters recognized by bookplate-style titles, Ann’s story is narrated by her loyal disciple, Mary (Thomasin McKenzie), a girl who buys into the extensively held perception that Ann is the second coming of Christ. Like Ann, Mary accumulates scars earned from society’s resistance to the Shaker ethos, and their voluble and excitable method to worship. Ann Lee is born, we be taught, in working-class Manchester, on the twenty ninth February, 1736 (Seyfried, it’s truthful to say, by no means appears absolutely comfy with the character’s accent).

The shut quarters of the household house imply that Ann is uncovered to her mother and father’ intimate moments, triggering an early aversion to acts of ‘fornication’. Her marriage, to brooding blacksmith Abraham (Christopher Abbott), is a troubled union. And after the deaths of all 4 of her kids earlier than the age of 1, Ann retreats fully from the bodily aspect of the union, devoting herself to onerous work and praising the Lord and incomes a small however devoted following within the course of. However Ann turns into satisfied that she has been chosen to take her church to America and, accompanied by eight congregants (the quantity drops to 6 as soon as two succumb to the pleasures of the flesh), she embarks on the perilous journey to the New World.

Though the movie is factually based mostly, there’s a nebulous, dreamlike high quality to the storytelling, as if we’re inhabiting one in every of Ann’s visions or visitations. A part of this comes from the musical facet of the movie, and half from the considerably distorted view ensuing from having Mary as our information. If not an unreliable narrator, she’s definitely a partisan one. It’s a frayed cloth of a narrative that comprises moments of daring artistry and sweetness, however doesn’t at all times knit collectively into one thing satisfying and strong.