In The Testament of Anne Lee, director Mona Fastvold gives us an invigorating drama-musical quite unlike anything I’ve seen before. It’s a shame the central character is a cultish nut job.
Amanda Seyfried stars as Ann Lee, a young woman who finds comfort in the Shaker movement, a religious sect offshoot of Christianity that believed shaking, chanting, and song could cure sin. They also would soon come to believe that Ann was the second coming of Christ, because that’s what religious sects do.
Seyfried delivers a fierce performance, though the film feels much grander than her. If she gets lost in her own movie it’s to no fault of her own; Fastvold’s production is just such a mesmerizing experience, at least for a while.
Given that the Shakers were prone to chanting and dance-like movements, The Testament of Ann Lee is an organic fit for a musical. I had no idea it was a musical when I started the movie, and even after several musical numbers I still wasn’t sure that it was one. The music is deeply moving and enthralling in nature. It’s about as religious of an experience as one can have when you’re an atheist.
As the movie progresses, Fastvold expands the musical numbers, ultimately to a fault. An amusing song in which an old man races through the woods as if he were a basset hound sniffing out
morels is amusing and yet shows the bounds by which Testament can operate before starting to feel like other musicals. The third act continues the epic struggle and Fastvold strains to bring it all together: is it a historical drama about religious persecution? A musical that must end with a Big Song? Something transcendent, as the first act hinted?
Sadly The Testament of Ann Lee, like all religions, becomes more of an empty promise than a fulfilling sermon. That doesn’t mean it isn’t memorable: the early material is enthralling cinema, even if the woman at the core of the story is an evangelical cult leader undeserving of the positive spin she’s given here.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.