“A testament to the idea that some themes may be unpopular, but as long as you hold faith and respect the subject matter, good cinema will come.”

Out of art’s three great subjects (love, death, and religion), it’s religion that in these cynical times has had a waning interest. Films that are unabashedly religious are few and far between, but Mona Fastvold is about to repair that with an uncompromising look at an 18th century religious leader and, quite frankly, a feminist in The Testament of Ann Lee. Somewhere in between a biopic, a musical, and an imitation of Matthew McConaughey’s infamous chest-pounding scene in The Wolf of Wall Street, Fastvold’s film is first and foremost a portrait of faith, unwavering faith. Gorgeously shot, and featuring a tour-de-force performance by Amanda Seyfried, The Testament of Ann Lee is, well, a testament to the idea that some themes may be unpopular, but as long as you hold faith and respect the subject matter, good cinema will come.

Born in Manchester, England, in 1736, Ann Lee would become one of the founding leaders of the Shakers, a Christian sect that institutionalized equality of the sexes and lived a celibate and communal life, and is mostly known for its ecstatic worship (hence the name). Ann Lee’s parents were among the early members of the Wardley Society led by James and Jane Wardley (which later became known as the Shakers), who broke off from the Quakers when the latter moved away from their ecstatic spiritual expression. A charismatic leader and powerful preacher, Mother Ann Lee eventually led her flock from England to the shores of America, where they settled in Niskayuna, in what is now New York State. At the dawn of the founding of the United States, Ann Lee died in peace (the Shakers were pacifists, though they were subject to violent oppression).

The Testament of Ann Lee follows her life story from an early age, as young Ann is a steadfast child working in Manchester’s textile industry with her younger brother William and sister Mary. God-fearing but also inquisitive, at a later age she (now played by Amanda Seyfried) and her siblings (Lewis Pullman and Thomasin McKenzie, who narrates Ann Lee’s story) seek out the Wardleys (Scott Handy and Stacy Martin), who have split off from the Quaker community. Ann is in a loveless marriage to Abraham (Christopher Abbott), who sinfully whips her during sex and fathers four children on her, none of whom reach their first birthday. Ann regularly gets visions of the fall of Adam and Eve, and rises to prominence in her newfound community as the Wardleys believe the Second Coming of Christ is near, and he will return in the form of a woman: Ann Lee. The Shakers, and in particular Ann as their figurehead, are persecuted by the Church of England, but Ann’s faith doesn’t waver, and she starts to advocate for an ascetic approach to the relationships between men and women, as well as urging people to confess their sins openly. When she experiences another revelation she leads the Shakers to the New World, where they live in peace with their indigenous neighbors. Not so much though with other settlers in the area, who accuse her of preaching witchcraft and then raid Ann’s small community in a harrowing scene that conjures up images from Elem Klimov’s classic masterpiece Come and See. Not much later, at the age of 48, she dies, leaving behind a legacy that lives on until this day.

There is a lot of religious talk in The Testament of Ann Lee, and for an atheist reviewer this is not always easy to grasp, but the film opens with her sister Mary speaking about Ann Lee and referring to her as ‘the woman clothed in the sun’, a reference from the Book of Revelation. Fastvold wrote the screenplay with her husband Brady Corbet, whose film The Brutalist opens with an upside down shot of the Statue of Liberty; this statue, the symbol of the United States, is often mistakenly seen as that sun-clad woman, and both films deal with an immigrant experience that is not entirely positive, an outright rejection by the white Christian ‘natives’. Given that the final act of Fastvold’s film is set during the time of the founding of the United States, Lady Liberty is still an intriguing link between the two films; how much of that liberty is, begrudgingly, given to Ann Lee and László Toth?

Or to women in general, for that matter. In that regard, The Testament of Ann Lee is not just nakedly religious, but also quite feminist. The equality of the sexes as professed by the Shaker movement, and Ann Lee in particular as its leader, a woman whose preaching on abstinence from sex had no doubt some basis in her sexual mistreatment by a husband who would eventually leave her because he couldn’t ‘get some’, is a refreshing take in what is still very much a male-dominated society, and by extension a male-dominated industry.

The rejection of the Shakers is made far more explicit than László’s is in The Brutalist, and Seyfried literally has to bare it all in an unflinching look at the religious extremism and misogyny that the country was founded on. It’s a brutal cap on a performance that should get Seyfried plenty of awards attention, because she truly does it all in this film: no less than three birthing scenes, each new one more bloody and explicit than the last; being beaten by her husband during quite graphic sex scenes (for an American production, anyway); and of course the singing and dancing throughout the film. Given the Shakers’ ecstatic worship, which includes a quasi chest-pounding self-flagellation, Fastvold and composer Daniel Blumberg use that rhythm to craft an exalted musical in which cinematographer William Rexer’s gorgeous imagery and camerawork extend that rhythm to find the right angles to capture the flow of Celia Rowlson-Hall’s choreographies. Seyfried is often the center of a tangle of people in these scenes; a point of reference here would be the closing scene of Ari Aster’s Midsommar, with Florence Pugh surrounded by a group of wailing women. In The Testament of Ann Lee this wailing is replaced by clear vocals praising the works of the Lord and the person of Ann Lee, and Seyfried’s voice is as unwavering as her character’s faith, in a return to musicals after the two Mamma Mia! films. The repetitiveness of these scenes weighs the film down a little, in particular because of the similarity in rhythm between Blumberg’s songs, but Fastvold’s blocking and a tendency to place Seyfried in the center of the frame in these exuberant scenes still turn this film so deeply entrenched in religious discourse unexpectedly into one of the better musicals in recent years.

For a film that is so thematically tied to a subject matter that has gone out of cinema’s graces, this is a triumph in and of itself. Eliminating a good portion of audience potential already by its uncompromising religious angle, then further alienating a good deal of the remaining audience by making it a musical, was a big decision by Fastvold, but given the nature of the Shakers and the way they practiced their religion, there simply was no other way. This makes for a challenging film, but by the grace of the exceptional filmmaking and the powerhouse performance at its heart, those willing to put aside their prejudices (and best believe this reviewer had them) will find exaltation.