In Testament of Ann Lee : Movie Review

Filmmakers Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet are clearly driven by ambition. They are also attracted to dreamers; difficult dreamers, intelligent but demanding, with plans that they must carry out no matter the personal cost.

They also deal with the dreamers who cross the ocean to America with these challenging, lofty plans. And finally, they find individual actors to play these roles.

We can say that the couple, who are art and life partners, are in good shape. Last year, they co-produced “The Brutalist,” directed by Corbet and co-written with Fastvold, which earned Adrien Brody an Oscar. And now we have “The Will of Ann Lee,” directed by Fastvold, an exciting and, yes, difficult film that features Amanda Seyfried as the leader of the Shakers. This is a performance that will blow your 18th century socks off.

Of course, there are fundamental differences. First of all, unlike the fictional architect Lázló Tóth in “The Brutalist,” Ann Lee was a real person; She was a woman whose life story has not been widely told (as the filmmakers note, people are more likely to remember the Shakers from their furniture designs.) And she was a deeply spiritual figure: a woman who dreamed of God from childhood, rejected the impulses of the flesh as sin, and was revered by her followers, who called her Mother and saw her as female reincarnation. of Jesus Christ.

Oh yeah, one more thing: “The Testament of Ann Lee” is a musical. It’s an 18th-century religious musical – it channels both the suffering (lots of suffering) and ecstasy of Lee’s life into song and dance numbers based on a dozen or so traditional hymns.

Yes, too much. There are so many. The movie is definitely not for everyone.

But there’s no denying that Fastvold has created something we’ve never seen before; Speaking of visions, his unique artistic vision fills every frame. And Seyfried is a marvel in another role that expands this immensely talented actress in ways we couldn’t have predicted.

Shooting on 70mm film as in “The Brutalist,” Fastvold and co-writer Corbet divide Lee’s life into chapters. The first details his upbringing as a poor, illiterate child in Manchester, England. We say that it is not a coincidence that a “miraculous” woman was born on February 29th. The year is 1736. Ann, the daughter of a blacksmith, has celestial dreams in her childhood. (He is also disgusted by seeing his parents having sex.)

Ann, a young woman, works as a nurse to escape from the factory where her family works. Desiring to achieve a spiritual goal, he attends a religious meeting and meets a female preacher; This is something completely new. The early Shakers, called the “Trembling Quakers of Manchester,” engaged in an intense form of confession; The term “shaker” refers to enthusiastic gestures during worship, as if trying to get rid of sin.

It’s hard to imagine what the film would have been like without Seyfried’s essential presence. It can be both spiritual and earthly, and when it breaks into song and dance choreographed by Celia Rowlson-Hall and scored by Daniel Blumberg (Oscar winner for the score of “Brutalist”), it feels organic and unforced.

Ann marries a locksmith and gives birth to four children with him. All of them die when they are 1 year old. It’s almost too painful to watch, especially as her husband has to pluck the last one from her grieving arms.

Devastated, he throws himself into worship. While in prison for her heretical beliefs, she fasts, sees visions, and begins to believe that she and her husband are being punished by God for having sexual intercourse. From now on he will practice and preach celibacy.

The second episode follows Ann as she embarks on a difficult journey across the Atlantic to establish a base in the New World. (Fastvold found a fully operational 18th-century ship in Sweden with hand-stitched sails.) Worshipers almost do not survive the voyage.

But somehow they arrive in New York two years before the American Revolution. The final act details years of efforts to find a home where the Shaker community could live and grow safely—it’s hardly clear-cut.

Eventually the community settled outside the city, where they learned to make furniture to earn an income. Ann’s brother William (Lewis Pullman, excellent) sets out to find a follower. The community has strict rules: celibacy, ban on marriage, gender equality, utopian pursuit of perfection.

But their beliefs put them in danger. In a chilling final scene, a violent mob of townspeople sets fire to a house where the group is recruiting members.

At their peak there were thousands of Shakers. Now there are exactly three (celibacy has limited the community’s ability to grow.) It’s not unreasonable to ask: Why did you devote so much energy, attention, and ingenuity to telling this particular story?

One answer is pretty simple: He had Seyfried. The actor practiced his 18th-century Manchester accent for a year before filming. He sings and dances. And it gives one of the rawest images of birth and child loss you’ll ever see on screen.

Whatever you think of the history here, this is just a visceral performance to behold.

“The Testament of Ann Lee,” a Searchlight Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association “for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and gore.” Duration: 137 minutes. Three stars out of four.