Some films only get better the longer you stay with them; The Testament of Ann Lee is one of those movies. I saw it a little over a week ago and haven't stopped thinking about it since. It is dense and beautiful, anchored by a career-best performance by Amanda Seyfried, and it will be one of the best films of the year when it releases.
Seyfried plays the titular Ann Lee, one of the founders of the Shakerism movement, which today has only three members to its name. Extreme in their beliefs to an extent, the Shakers were a movement of Christians hailing from England, who arrived in America in the late 1700s. They believed in celibacy, egalitarianism, and pacifism. Their world was a utopian community, where everyone lived in perceived harmony.
At least, that's what the brochure would tell us. In writer/director Mona Fastvold's vision, history is never that neat. Instead, it's as messy and beautiful as the people, and Fastvold never judges or editorializes her subjects. This is as empathetic as a would-be biopic can be, a kind of God's eye view of a past we can't fully understand.
In England, Anne Lee lives a life of squalor with her brother. They are as devoted to one another as they are to God, who never seems to answer their prayers of a better life. Preachers on the street proclaim God is in man, not woman, and the world is built with a power structure in mind.
Anne Lee has four children, all of whom die. Something shifts inside of her. She finds the spiritual in celibacy and reaching out with platonic love in place of the physical. Soon, others flock to her. They are also broken and it is Anne Lee who helps them heal.
When England proves too small for their dreams, Anne Lee and her flock head to America, where the promise of freedom awaits. But those preaching equality and peace are quickly seen as a threat, and Anne Lee's odd, if sincere, declarations of a better world are met with violence.
Fastvold stages fervent belief in something greater through breathtaking musical numbers, where Seyfried and cast move in spams and orgasmic seizures through dazzling choreography and song. The numbers are based off real Shaker hymns, brought to life by Daniel Blumberg with such force they feel brand new. The combination results in a hypnotic and spiritual experience that allows us to understand how and why people would find solace in them.
This is a beautiful picture, immaculately shot by William Rexer. It is a miracle to think it only cost 10 million dollars when films twenty times that look like TV specials. Fastvold's portrait of a bygone world feels true and lived-in. It echoes with souls of the past. From the first scene, where women shake and howl through barren trees in autumn twilight, to a mystic voyage across the Atlantic, Fastvold delivers a rapturous experience that must be seen on the big screen.
In the end, The Testament of Ann Lee doesn't pretend to give answers to who or what Ann Lee was. It steadfastly refuses to present her either a saint or a grifter, never pitying nor admonishing her for the life she lived. It doesn't paint Shakerism as a lost cause or a destroyed utopia because they aren't for others to define.
What Fastvold does is present a truth intertwined with fiction. A folktale and oral history in one, uncertain and honest in spirit, even when it claims to witness miracles. Perhaps, it argues, the true miracle is that at one point, against all odds, a group of people lived in a world that was kind to all. Even if only for a blink of an eye.
