Mona Fastvold, who directed the daring historical musical The Testament of Ann Lee, was hesitant to call her movie a regular musical. Instead, she called it a “musical and movement piece.” Amanda Seyfried plays Ann Lee, the founder of the Shakers, who is seen as a female Christ by her followers. The movie reimagines 18th-century worship through ecstatic songs and dances. It premieres in Los Angeles and tells the story of Lee’s rise from obscurity to building the largest utopian society in the United States.
Before she refused to marry and preached against fornication as a barrier to God, Ann Lee went through persecution, imprisonment, and personal tragedies like losing several babies. Fastvold and Brady Corbet wrote the script together, using Shaker hymns that had been adapted for the screen to show emotional worship that wasn’t performed. The movie goes from revival meetings in England to New York’s isolation, mixing Thoreauvian nature with radical faith.
Seyfried, who is known for her role in “Mamma Mia!” unlearned how to sing well and instead used raw, instinctive Shaker vocals. She would lie on the studio floor to experiment while she cried and laughed. At first, she wasn’t sure how to embody the movement and songs, but she trusted Fastvold’s vision and fully immersed herself as the “first American feminist.” Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, and Christopher Abbott play Lee’s husband in the supporting cast.
Searchlight Pictures will release the movie in a few theaters on Christmas 2025, after it gets a lot of attention at Venice and TIFF. This puts it in the running for an Oscar along with Fastvold’s The Brutalist. Seyfried’s “feral” turn in this revolutionary devotional epic has gotten a lot of praise from critics.
