‘The Testament of Ann Lee’ movie review: Mona Fastvold’s untamed musical circles around its own magnificence

The Testament of Ann Lee begins with a feral promise as we see a group of nuns indulged in a set of ferocious movements that are part of their devotion. With an eerie undercurrent in the music, they beat their chests with their hands, their faces devoid of any emotion. Together, they sing a song in praise of the ‘woman cloathed by the sun’. In the mystery of a dense forest, their rhythmic movements carry a touch of the supernatural. Until, one amongst them, with a damaged right eye, breaks away from the band and stands looking right into the camera at us. She is Mary (Mary Partington), the reverential narrator of this musical extravaganza. In her voice, Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried) becomes a legend.

Her story is told in three chapters, filled with spirited and sentimental hymns of the Shaker community that resonate with a rare folk passion when handled with attentive grace by composer Daniel Blumberg. Filmmaker Mona Fastvold envisions Ann’s life with the aid of thumping melodies, as the songs encompass the sheer monumentality of her staggering faith. And so, the three chapters are essentially songs that permeate through the extraordinary life led by Ann, from the time she was a girl in Manchester, working with her brother William (Lewis Pullman) at a cotton factory to her transformation into a woman, who propagates celibacy and later when she becomes Mother Ann to her followers after receiving frantic visions from God.

Throughout the journey, her tryst with sex remains paramount to her faith. One night as a child, Ann is disturbed after witnessing her parents engaged in the act and gets violently beaten by her father when she mentions about it at the dining table the next morning. Fastvold rushes through these portions instead of stopping to ponder over the mind of an adolescent Ann. The film begins to take some coherence later when Ann becomes a member of the group of Shaking Quakers and marries Abraham (Christopher Abbott), whose sadomasochistic tendencies leaves her agonised, as they lose all of their four children.

A still from ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’
| Photo Credit:
Searchlight Pictures

It is only when she is arrested for interrupting the church service that she gets a coherent vision where she sees herself levitating in what is among the most striking imageries of the film. Cinematographer William Rexer films her up-close with a demystifying gravity, concentrating on the fleshly appeal of her body as it experiences a transcendental awakening. There is a ravishing physicality to the moment which the camera captures on face value, without reveling too much into embellishing the metaphysical touches.

That acute sense of palpability extends even to the feverish performance of Amanda, who embodies the trials and tribulations of Ann with a bodily transfiguration. Instead of deifying her presence, Amanda works around to humanise her concerns, channelising an animalistic fervour into her being, seen especially in the grotesquely mesmerising shaking rituals which are present in abundance throughout the film. It ultimately does get tiresome to witness, providing little philosophical inquiry into the magnitude of their faith as Fastvold indulges more in sensorial satisfaction.

A still from ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’
| Photo Credit:
Searchlight Pictures

That the film’s sympathies lie resolutely with Ann begins to feel limiting. She is proclaimed as God and there is seldom a countering force to challenge her thoughts. Even her relationship with her brother is not as emotively explored when it seems to form the foundation of the screenplay. As promised in its opening minutes, the film unfolds like a legend, allowing little time to reflect over its immense portrayal of wonder while being tonally consistent, extending the epic-like sentimentality throughout the course of its runtime.

The Testament of Ann Lee works best as a musical performance recounting the life and message of the remarkable woman while lacking the gleam of a steady historical, with other contemporary events not as meticulously imagined. Even then, its lively moody design is supremely enchanting. It provokes the heart, shakes the soul, leaving nothing but silence to prevail as it departs in the final frame, much like the mechanisms of such insurmountable devotion — stirring and mesmerising to behold but not as inquisitive in thought.

The Testament of Ann Lee was screened at the Red Lorry Film Festival 2026 in Mumbai