Nowadays, you’d probably have to wait a solid five years (if you’re lucky) to see a film as textured and ambitious as “The Brutalist” being followed up by the same team that famously toiled over its meticulous construction. For creative duo Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet, though, laurels could never afford to be rested upon while they’ve got the arthouse scene by the throat, which explains why the role-reversed “The Testament of Ann Lee” has blown through the festival scene like a new religion suddenly sweeping through the land with the determined, single-minded rigour of an all-consuming tornado.
This time, it’s Fastvold’s turn to direct while sharing writing duties with Corbet, but the shared ideals between the filmmakers are palpably clear from the very first frame; just as with “The Brutalist,” “Ann Lee” commands every second of the screen with an old-school determination towards grandiosity, but on its own terms, Fastvold’s vision comes to offer something far more audacious, and far more visceral.
It all begins with Ann Lee’s (a beguiling Amanda Seyfried) discovery of, and subsequent enchantment with, the Christian sect known colloquially as the “Shakers” (so called due to their tendency to get jiggy in moments of extreme cathartic devotion to the Lord). Seeking meaning in the melancholy of her 18th-century existence—made unbearable by, among other things, being a woman in the 18th century—Lee’s discovery of the movement proves a literal godsend.
So touched by God is Lee, in fact, that a series of personal tragedies and excessive incarceration lead her to the epiphany that she is, in fact, Christ reborn, tasked with the mission of spreading His message through the prism of a new religious offshoot preaching enlightenment through celibacy. As one would expect, such prospects don’t seem too enticing in her native Manchester, but with the vision of colonial expansion, perhaps America holds the fertile ground upon which her Mecca will stand.
Also Explore: The 10 Best Movie Musicals in Cinema
The unity of vision between Fastvold and her creative (and personal) partner Corbet is beyond dispute, not only in the sense of their aforementioned shared command of visual immensity, but equally in their shared thematic intent. Where “The Brutalist” was an examination of the crumbling American dream through the prism of architectural self-immolation, “The Testament of Ann Lee” sees its own horrors in the westward journey to build a monument towards devotional endurance in a more chaotic physical fashion.
This organic diversion is communicated with an almost intuitive urgency, as Fastvold’s lyrical sense of movement and elegant disharmony go well beyond the film’s status as an outright musical. (Oh yeah, did I mention that part?) As Daniel Blumberg’s compositions set the pace of a path guided only by sheer force of determination in the face of blinding obstacles, Fastvold synthesizes the scope of Lee’s longing for stability in a world that has already taken so much from her at every juncture.
Seyfried’s miraculous turn absorbs all of this strife through the actor’s famously beady eyes, this time reflecting an absolute horror of oppressive hardship at the same time that they beam with the ecstasy of a lighthouse so convinced that it will guide all wayward ships to the shore. For Lee, this journey through the New World is the elation of everything and the void of nothing all at once, and Seyfried’s tortured possession brings its own strange comfort to a realm that finds its balance in cultish expression.
It’s perhaps because of this devotion to intrinsic exaltation that “The Testament of Ann Lee” appears somewhat reticent in espousing a direct thesis from Mona Fastvold’s recounting of this disturbing chapter of spiritual self-destruction. But for the devout, the euphoric outpouring of primal human frailty is its own statement and subsequent proof, and what Fastvold Brings to the beaten altar ranks easily among the most passionately piercing examples of this entirely tactile and intemperate truth.
