★★★ (3 out of 4)
In the modern age epitomized by songs that invite you to “shake, shake, shake/shake your booty,” those good vibrations are often an invitation to sex. Nothing could be further from the minds of the founders of the Shakers religious sect, begun in England 1747 and then organized in the United States in the 1780s. Besides their gift for making clean, minimalist furniture, the Shakers believed sex and procreation were the root of all evil, despite all the twisting and shouting in their ecstatic dances of worship. Intrigued? You’ll get revelations galore in “The Testament of Ann Lee,” a cinematic spellbinder in which Amanda Seyfried plays the literal hell out of the heaven-obsessed title role, an early leader of the Shakers sect and someone who believed herself to be the living incarnation of Christ on earth. Bold words, and Ann soon became famous for them.
The film is directed without an ounce of smug mockery or condescension by Mona Fastvold, who cowrote the script with her filmmaking life partner Brady Corbet—they shared the same duties on Corbet’s “The Brutalist.” And their new film is similarly unbeholden to rule following.
The tension flattens in the film’s drowsy second half, but the blazing wonder of Amanda Seyfried as Shakers leader Ann Lee makes believers of all.
The grown Ann we meet in this “Testament” has already married laborer Abraham (a slyly bemused Christopher Abbott) and suffered the deaths of four children before their first birthday. These grisly events are all condensed into a song-and-dance collage number that I won’t spoil because you won’t believe it until you see it. And maybe not even then. Also, Ann can’t shake (excuse the pun) the sight of seeing her parents have grunting sex at an impressionable age or any age to judge by her freaked out expression.
Ann is now primed to welcome the celibacy vow. Abe is less enthusiastic, as an entitled kink master who liked to whip his beloved’s bare bottom while reading scripture. Still, the couple, along with Ann’s gay brother William (a terrific Lewis Pullman), set sail from Manchester, England across the Atlantic to America (near Albany actually), where increasingly codified Shakers customs begin to draw ridicule as a prelude to violent persecution.
Yet the illiterate Ann perseveres in her belief in gender and racial equality and harmony in all things, as befits this living female Christ. It’s also a spark for ace cinematographer William Rexer to light Samuel Bader’s superb production design so we can see what Shaker life really looked like two-and-a-half centuries ago.
We feel it, too, thanks to Seyfried’s transfixing performance and hearing 10 Shaker hymns and the sometimes jarring but mostly thrilling contemporary sounds from composer Daniel Blumberg (an Oscar winner for “The Brutalist”). The result, heightened by the romper-stomper choreography of Celia Rowlson-Hall, is viscerally exciting, as it must have been then, and also an occasion of delicious sin, definitely not as originally intended.
It's that tension, built into each scene by Fastvold, that keeps the film raw and riveting even when the tension tends to flatten in the film’s drowsy second half. Who’s the audience for this film? Not Shakers who once numbered nearly 6000 and are down to three at last count. Celibacy is a real detriment in growing a cult.
The reason to see “The Testament of Ann Lee”—and it’s a solid one—is to watch an experimental filmmaker with the skills possessed by Fastvold blow the dust off history to show the throbbing elemental life that once persuaded disciples, however few, that she had the only music to make them dance. Crazy? Maybe. But for a few hours at least the blazing wonder of Seyfried makes believers of us all.