“The Testament of Ann Lee” refuses to be defined by a single genre. At once a historical drama, a psychological portrait and a folk musical, the film is powerful because it transcends definition. As a rigorous, historically anchored portrait of Shaker religious life, it is epic without losing its intimacy and immersive without becoming indulgent.
Shot on 70 mm at the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, “The Testament of Ann Lee” follows the rise of Ann Lee, the spiritual leader of the Shaker movement, as she emigrates to America with her followers to escape persecution and establish a communal society in the New World.
Despite boasting a 33-track soundtrack — including an original score and three original songs inspired by traditional Shaker hymns — and some of the most intricate choreography I’ve seen onscreen in recent years, “The Testament of Ann Lee” never announces itself as a musical. Characters do sing, but the songs emerge organically from prayer, labor and communal ritual rather than staged performance. To the film’s great advantage, the musical sequences never feel like interruptions to the narrative, but rather expressions of its emotional core.
Ideas deliberately withheld from dialogue are clarified through movement, which binds the community together and gives their belief a tangible form. The dancing is ritualistic and erratic, marked by the collective motion of stamping feet and spinning bodies that feels as exhaustingly euphoric as the dizzying May Queen sequence in “Midsommar.”
However, this communal motion as a vehicle for the Shakers’ religious ideology is not sustainable. As the film progresses, the choreography begins to strain under its own repetition, shifting from something unifying and rapturous to something harsher and more compulsive. As devotion hardens into discipline, the rhythms that once bound the Shaker community together begin to expose fault lines within it.
This strain is echoed in the film’s quiet depiction of suffering. In one striking scene, Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried) lies in the back of a wagon as blood drips from her fingertips into the snow. This image underscores the film’s central idea that in this community, belief emerges and is sustained through endurance and labor rather than revelation. In general, the film’s deep engagement with Shaker history never feels academic. Instead, their past is displayed as shaped by daily work and the fragile structures of belief that hold the society together.
By the time the film reaches its unresolved ending, faith no longer feels collective in the way the elaborate group dances suggest. Instead, it becomes concentrated within the figure of Ann — isolating her as both the source of belief and its greatest burden. As this projection of the community’s belief onto Ann plays out, Seyfried’s performance comes to carry the full emotional weight of the film. Marked by rigidity and exhaustion, her physical presence reflects the film’s understanding that Shaker belief is something lived with and struggled through — not simply declared. Her stunning vocal performances of songs like “Hunger and Thirst” and “All Is Summer” never overwhelm the scenes but deepen them, naturally folding into the film’s rhythm.
The film also has a tactile richness that anchors it even in its most disorienting moments. Working alongside her co-writer and partner Brady Corbet, director Mona Fastvold reunited much of the same creative team behind “The Brutalist” — a lineage immediately evident in the film’s lingering shots and shots resembling paintings. Natural light, wooden interiors, open fields and carefully composed wide frames situate the film within a grounded, historically attentive register, allowing the rhythmic emotion of the story and performances to speak for themselves.
“The Testament of Ann Lee” ultimately asks for audience patience and close attention in return for a cinematic experience that is as emotionally overwhelming as it is viscerally grounded. The remarkably complex film refuses easy catharsis or clear moral judgements, instead lingering in the discomfort of belief and communal fracture. Seen on a large screen, its scale and intimacy come through as inseparable, allowing its choreography, imagery and performances to fully resonate. “The Testament of Ann Lee” is one of the year’s most unique and affecting films that will likely stay with audiences long after the credits roll.
“The Testament of Ann Lee” will be screened at Loew Auditorium at the Hopkins Center for the Arts on Feb. 20. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Mary Ann Haagen, a Shaker scholar and current visiting scholar in the department of music, and curator at the Enfield Shaker Museum Michael O’Connor.
