Filmmakers Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet are clearly fascinated by ambition. They’re fascinated, too, by dreamers — difficult dreamers, brilliant but demanding people who have plans they must fulfill no matter the personal cost.
They’re also interested in dreamers who cross the ocean to America with these difficult, lofty plans. And, finally, they find singular actors to play these roles.
You could say the couple, artistic and life partners, is on a roll. They together made “The Brutalist” last year, directed by Corbet and co-written with Fastvold, which won Adrien Brody an Oscar. And now, with Fastvold directing, we have “The Testament of Ann Lee” — a stirring and, yes, difficult movie that features a blazing Amanda Seyfried as the Shaker leader. It’s a performance that will knock your 18th-century socks off.
There are, of course, key differences. For one thing, unlike fictional architect Lázló Tóth in “The Brutalist,” Ann Lee was a real person — a woman whose life story hasn’t been widely told (as the filmmakers have pointed out, people are more likely to remember the Shakers for their furniture design.) And she was a deeply spiritual figure: a woman who from childhood had visions of God, rejected the urgings of the flesh as sinful, and was revered by followers who called her Mother and saw her as a female reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
Oh, yes, one other thing: “The Testament of Ann Lee” is a musical. An 18th-century religious musical — with both the agony (lots of agony) and ecstasy of Lee’s life channeled into song-and-dance numbers based on a dozen or so traditional hymns.
Yes, it’s a lot. It’s lots and lots. The film is absolutely not for everyone.
But Fastvold has undeniably created something we’ve never quite seen before; speaking of visions, her singular artistic vision fills every frame. And Seyfried is a marvel, in yet another role that stretches this fiercely talented actor in ways we might not have predicted.
Fastvold, shooting on 70mm film as in “The Brutalist,” and cowriter Corbet divide Lee’s life into chapters. The first details her upbringing as a poor, illiterate child in Manchester, England. We’re told it was no coincidence that a “miraculous” woman would be born on Feb. 29. The year is 1736. Ann, daughter of a blacksmith, has heavenly visions as a child. (She’s also disgusted by the sight of her parents having sex.)
As a young woman, to escape the mill where her family works, Ann works as a nurse. Yearning for spiritual purpose, she attends a religious meeting and encounters a female preacher, something altogether new. The early Shakers — called the “Shaking Quakers of Manchester” — engage in an intense form of confession; the term “shaker” refers to their ecstatic gestures in worship, as if to shake off sin.
It’s tough to imagine what the film would be like without Seyfried’s grounding presence. She can be both spiritual and earthly, and when she breaks into song and dance, in numbers choreographed by Celia Rowlson-Hall to music by Daniel Blumberg (an Oscar winner for his “Brutalist” score), it feels organic and unforced.
Ann marries a locksmith, with whom she births four babies. All die by age 1. It’s almost too painful to watch, especially when her husband must tear away the last one from her grieving arms.
Devastated, she throws herself into worship. During a stint in jail for her heretical beliefs, she fasts, has visions and comes to believe she and her husband have been punished by God for having sexual intercourse. She will henceforth practice and preach celibacy.
The second chapter involves Ann leading a harrowing journey across the Atlantic to establish a base in the New World. (Fastvold found a fully operational 18th-century ship, with hand-stitched sails, in Sweden.) The worshippers almost don’t survive the trip.
But they arrive in New York City, somehow, two years before the American Revolution. The final act details the yearslong efforts to find a home where the Shaker community can live safely and grow — hardly a given.
Eventually the community settles upstate, where they learn to build furniture for revenue. Ann’s brother William (Lewis Pullman, excellent) sets out to find followers. The community has strict rules: celibacy, no marriage, gender equality, a pursuit of utopian perfection.
But their beliefs put them in danger. A chilling final sequence has a violent mob of townspeople setting fire to a house where the group is recruiting members.
At their peak, there were thousands of Shakers. Now there are exactly three (celibacy limited the community’s ability to grow.) It’s not unreasonable to ask: Why put so much energy and attention and craftsmanship into telling this particular story?
Well, one answer is pretty simple: they had Seyfried. The actor spent a year before shooting simply working on her 18th-century Manchester accent. She sings, she dances. And she gives one of the rawest renderings of childbirth, and child loss, that you’ll see on-screen.
No matter how you feel about the history here, it’s a visceral performance that simply demands to be seen.
“The Testament of Ann Lee,” a Searchlight Pictures release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association “for sexual content, graphic nudity, violence and bloody images.” Running time: 137 minutes. Three stars out of four.
