‘The Testament of Ann Lee’ Review

Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee arrives with the unmistakable charge of a filmmaker working at the height of her ambition. Fresh off the monumental reception of The Brutalist, which she co-wrote with Brady Corbet, Fastvold returns with a companion piece that is not a direct sequel yet echoes so many of the same obsessions. Once again we find ourselves watching characters who attempt to build something sacred within a world determined to press in on them. Once again the film studies devotion, creation, and the American promise through a lens that refuses cynicism. And once again Fastvold explores how the interior life of a visionary becomes reshaped, and at times distorted, by the world around her.

To be fully honest, the lesson I walked away with may sound like a backhanded compliment, but it is the truth. This film deepened my appreciation for what Fastvold and Corbet were doing with The Brutalist. The two films feel closely related in spirit. Both are concerned with creation as an almost doomed endeavor. Both treat faith, artistic invention, and national mythology as intertwined pursuits that cannot escape the weight of the systems they live inside. And both films resist easy judgment of their protagonists, even when those protagonists make choices that ripple with discomfort. The Testament of Ann Lee simply channels those ideas through song, prayer, and the ecstatic tradition of the Shakers, whose visionary founder believed herself to be a female incarnation of Christ on Earth.

The label musical feels both accurate and misleading here. The characters sing and dance often enough to fit the genre, but the effect is closer to collective prayer than to the usual architecture of musical storytelling. Daniel Blumberg’s extraordinary score electrifies traditional hymns until they thrum with a kind of ecstatic pressure. Celia Rowlson-Hall’s choreography reshapes the Shaker congregation into a single breathing unit, a human altar built in devotion. Watching them move together is genuinely transporting. It becomes a physical expression of belief, a meditation that reminds you how worship can use the body to speak when words fall short. If this film hits you hard, especially if you grew up in any religious tradition, it may be because these movements conjure something remembered, or at least something deeply recognized.

Amanda Seyfried is astonishing. This is the kind of performance that feels guided by something beyond sheer technique. There is pain in her eyes, conviction in her posture, and a trembling openness in her singing that turns imperfection into honesty. Seyfried commits entirely, body and soul, and the film leans on her whenever its narrative structure becomes uncertain. She becomes the emotional anchor that the script sometimes fails to build on its own.

Fastvold’s direction is equally powerful. Shot on film with a staggering attention to period detail, the world of the Shakers feels tactile and fully lived in. There is a sincerity to this recreation that never feels ironic or detached. Fastvold is not mocking these people, nor does she treat their faith like an artifact pinned in a museum case. Her camera watches them closely, almost reverently. The story does not shy away from the strangeness of their beliefs, and at times the imagery does recall the ritualistic unease of something like Midsommar. Yet Fastvold never reduces the Shakers to a cult or caricature. Her approach is empathetic even when the iconography naturally provokes unease. This tension becomes one of the film’s most fascinating qualities.

The opening hour of the film is gripping. Fastvold confronts the tragedies of Ann Lee’s early life with a delicate but unflinching hand. The sequence depicting her four pregnancies, each ending in the death of an infant, is harrowing and makes clear why Ann’s vision of a celibate religious community would become central to her faith. It is a portrayal of trauma that shapes a spiritual calling without reducing that calling to a single psychological explanation. For a while the film promises a profound character study.

The promise is not fully realized. As the story broadens to depict the formation and expansion of the Shaker movement in America, Ann herself starts to fade into the background. The film becomes more of a historical survey than an intimate portrait. It touches on the Revolutionary War, the persecution faced by the Shakers, and their encounters with other social and political forces, yet it rarely digs into these threads with real complexity. Fastvold gestures toward the immigrant experience, the dream of building a perfect society, and the contradictions inherent in American history, but those gestures remain gestures. The film ends up summarizing Ann’s life rather than fully excavating it.

The narration contributes to this distance. There is simply too much of it, and it often repeats or explains ideas that the images already express more beautifully. It attempts to fill narrative gaps but instead interrupts the rhythm. Rather than feeling guided, I often felt told. Rather than being drawn deeper into Ann’s inner world, I felt pushed away from it.

Technically, the film is beautiful. The production design, the costumes, the cinematography, and the use of 35mm film, give the film the grandeur of a sweeping historical epic. At times it recalls classics like Amadeus or Silence. The musical sequences are some of the most impressive committed to film in recent memory, and they are captured with a clarity and boldness that reveal Fastvold’s confidence. When the movie fully gives itself over to dance and chant, I was hypnotized. These scenes often become moments of spiritual frenzy, where suffering transforms into communion and personal anguish becomes collective release.

Yet emotional immersion remains inconsistent. I admired the craft, the ambition, and the scale, but I often felt like I was watching from a distance rather than being lifted into the state of rapture the film wants me to share. The story’s emotional core is thinner than its aesthetic grandeur might suggest. Ann’s visions are powerful but rarely explored from the inside. Her premonitions appear, but the film never interrogates them. As a result, the drama becomes less about her inner struggle and more about what she represents to others. This is compelling in theory but never fully realized in practice.

Still, there is something remarkable in the film’s sincerity. Few films today engage with faith without condescension or irony. Few treat spiritual longing with the seriousness it deserves. And few attempt to merge historical storytelling with experimental musical expression in such a wholehearted way. The Testament of Ann Lee may not reach the monumental heights of The Brutalist, but it shares enough of that film’s conviction, ambition, and obsessive craftsmanship that it stands as a worthy companion.

It is messy, unwieldy, and at times frustrating. But it is also bold, hypnotic, and undeniably alive. Fastvold reaches for transcendence, and even when she falls short, her reach is worth honoring.

The Testament of Ann Lee arrives in Theaters on December 25, 2025.