John Daly-Peoples
The Testament of Ann Lee
Director, Mona Fastvold
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
The Testaments of Ann Lee comes with excellent credentials having been written by Mona Fastvold and her partner Brady Corbet, with whom she co-wrote The Brutalist which was based on the life of émigré architect Marcel Breuer. That film was a metaphor for the struggles of an artist in post-war America. Testament follows the life of Shaker founder Ann Lee and is a metaphor for religious and social change in pre and post Revolutionary America
It is an earnest attempt to give Ann Lee her place in history as a major religious figure who endured religious persecution in 18th-century England for her position as a female preacher as well as in America where she and the Shaker movement were seen as unpatriotic pacifists.
The early American Shakers were known for their skill in what is now seen as stylish, minimalist furniture and their approach to simple architecture and there are sequences of constructing buildings and simple objects but not much about the tenets of the religion
Lee is played by Amanda Seyfried, with Lewis Pullman as her brother William and Christopher Abbott as her husband Abraham, who fathers her four children, all of whom die in infancy. Their deaths probably affected her, contributing to her aversion to marriage and sexual activity, influencing the subsequent Shaker celibacy doctrine.
Director Mona Fastvold is great at meaningful close-ups and handles the dance sequences as if they were only part of this religion/cult which has any merit or meaning. In these dramatic Broadway musical – like sequences there is lot of shaking, shivering, hand clapping and foot stomping ranging from some ecstatic dancing in her early Manchester days where the dancers look to be on acid trips to the more sedate Shaker dances the groups still perform
While the film has obvious good intentions, illuminating the history of Ann Lee and her contribution to American religious history it can also seen a cautionary tale about the dangers of being captured by religious leaders and ideology. The dangers of believing what self -declared prophets tell you, believing in visions and biblical interpretations. The film demonstrates how people can be sucked into religions or cults based on false information and interpretations.
Maybe audiences know about the revolt and reforms of religion in eighteenth century. Europe and the growth of alternative faiths and religious leaders such the Methodist Movement with John Wesley and early feminists like Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, but the film provides little about what Ann Lee was reacting against.
While we see Ann Lee commanding groups of people we don’t get a sense of her charisma or oratory skills and her occasional visions of deities and paradise make her out to be more of a charlatan than prophet.
The big unanswered question looms over all the intense close-ups and hectic dance sequences is What is Ann Lee’s testament? What is her way to save souls. – celibacy, public acknowledgment of sins and misdeeds as well as dancing – I could go with the dancing.
John Daly-Peoples
Arts Writer / Arts Consultant
Arts Editor, NZ Arts Review
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