With the recent arrest of teenage orgy enthusiast Andrew Mountbatten Windsor it might be expected that The Testament of Ann Lee is what resulted in his arrest. Instead it is the apparently the true life story of Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried) who around 1736 who was regarded as the second coming of Christ and developed the Shakers movement in Manchester, England. Her vision saw the movement committed to physical labour and an aversion to physical intimacy meaning that our Editor’s wife is so keen to sign him up (‘You’re fired!’ – Ed).
Ann Lee soon found tortured souls signing up to her movement and believes she has a calling to New World of America and for residents of 1700’s Manchester the appeal is obvious and we ourselves would be only to keen to sign up if the calling was to take us to say, Barbados. She takes them and her message along with her husband Abraham (Christopher Abbot) and brother William (Lewis Pullman) to the US.
Much of the film sees the group’s submitting to worship through song and dance beating themselves on the chest and speaking in tongues that plays like overwhelming hysteria. Those sequences are well choreographed and well photographed as is the entire film. That the film builds their own community in a pre-revolution America and developed quite a following before it began to fall apart for her.
Directed and co-written by Mona Fastwold who was nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar for ‘The Brutalist’ there’s a lot to unpack here. Seyfried is great as might be expected but her role is a little one note – her opposition to slavery is never explored or acted upon beyond a single scene where she shouts ’Shame’ at an auction. There’s a irony about her sexual repression instigated by the sight of her parents making love but later submitting to her husband’s BDSM urges. And the condensing of forty or more years into two hours with the use of a voiceover is padded out by the dance routines and edging out the exploration and challenges of Ann Lee as a spiritual leader. It’s an ambitious and bold film to have financed and the tableaux and are presented in a type of painterly NeoClassicism style but it’s wider commercial appeal is limited and the central person in The Testament of Ann Lee is one that’s difficult to empathize.
related feature : cast & crew of ‘Bonhoeffer’ share the passion behind the true WWII story of faith & resistance
related feature : ‘Children of the Corn’ – LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY / UHD
Here’s the trailer……
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