While most if not all will probably use The Brutalist for their reference point for the latest film from writer/director duo Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet, the last film Mona actually directed was the lush cottage-core lesbian love story The World to Come, which I caught some time ago on the festival circuit and was quite charmed by. That film, was yet another historical drama like Ann Lee, but about two women who are left alone by their husbands alone in the 1850s in the expanse of Schoharie County, New York and find solace, and eventually love in the company of one another. Here, we have yet another feminist historical drama, this time co-written by the pair and inspired by a shaker hymn Mona came across while researching The World to Come.
The Testament of Ann Lee, which I just caught at the Philadelphia Film Festival, is an sympathetic look at the founding of the Shaker religion, but through the eyes of its fearless leader Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried). The film is billed as a musical, but it’s not a musical in the conventional sense. The Shaker religion, an offshoot of the Quakers, and an abbreviation of “Shaking Quakers” because of their ecstatic way of worship, which includes dancing and shaking as a way to “shake off” sin. The musical and dance component is used here to help to normalize these moments of frantic worship, by pairing them with music and choreography.
We follow Ann Lee, a woman who begins the film broken and struggling with her faith after birthing four children with her devout Quaker husband Abraham, and none of them surviving past the age of one. In an infirmary she is delivered a vision – whereas Jesus – a man – was the first coming, the second coming would be a woman – her, fueled by her tragedy and loss. The Quakers allowed women preachers, so she then began to spread this message along with the primary accord that would differentiate Shakers, their oath of celibacy. Ann’s vision was explicit that this was the only way to undo the sin, which was the reason man was cast out of the garden of Eden. After beginning to spread her gospel in England in the late 1740s, the film follows Ann and her flock who preach pacifism and racial and gender equality, as they journey to the new world – with its promise of religious freedom.
The Testament of Ann Lee isn’t a new narrative – someone chosen by god, spreading their gospel to the dismay of those in power around them — but the genderswap of it all offers a compelling new take given this happened in the 1700s. The film itself is a fascinating portrait of one woman’s faith and a rather intriguing movement she was able to pioneer, with the help of her queer brother (Lewis Pullman) as her herald. While having their leader, who was according to them the second coming of Christ, now represented by a woman made them a controversial group, their progressive and pacifistic nature definitely didn’t help either during the American Revolution. This is all brought to life by Amanda Seyfried, who proved with her take on Elizabeth Holmes in The Drop Out, she’s capable of both embodying a charismatic and polarizing leader and she does that flawlessly yet again, but this time a bit more empathetic and meek in her presence onscreen.
While the film, shot on actual film, definitely has that historical drama earthy and grounded look and feel. It’s when the film breaks into one of its “songs” and I say that loosely, since sometimes it’s less a conventional song, but often a chorus of chanting or shaking, that the frame stirs to life in an unexpected way. Every bit of space it is filled with the movement of bodies passionately undulating, dancing and praising in a way that felt like a visual poem onscreen. Choreographed by Celia Rowlson-Hall who also worked on Vox Lux, this gives the movement a meaning and intention that is as much about telling a story as it is for the Shakers to celebrate their faith.
The Testament of Ann Lee manages to not only show how this offshoot of the Quaker religion found its footing in America, but also work as this poignant story of one woman’s struggle with her faith. Amanda Seyfried simply wows in here in a performance that is the definition of awards worthy, opposite Lewis Pullman who brings to life her dutiful and selfless brother, who’s also trying to find redemption and his place in an unwelcoming time. It’s daring, it’s divisive and it really felt like the yin to The Brutalist’s hypermasculine yang. Its a film that definitely caught me off guard with not only its historical retelling, but how it does so with such an intimacy into the lives and dreams of its subjects who are never portrayed as outsiders, but those who haven’t found their place yet and sadly wouldn’t now either.
