The Testament of Ann Lee

The Testament of Ann Lee, 2025, 1 ¾ stars

Shaker but not stirred

Ann is an original but ill-conceived misfire

Exclusive to MeierMovies, November 20, 2025

They say every movie eventually finds its audience. Good luck, Ann Lee.

The third feature film by Norwegian director Mona Fastvold, The Testament of Ann Lee is a gritty, religious-themed drama set in the 18th century, featuring difficult child births (and deaths), sexual assaults, explicit nudity, adultery and torture. And it’s a musical. But at least it will appeal to the people who still worship Shakerism – both of them.

This is the story of “Mother” Ann Lee, from her childhood in 1740s Manchester, England, to her imprisonment for promoting the new “Shaking” sect of the Quaker religion, to her spiritual awakening, to her voyage to New York, to her founding American Shakerism, to her death. That’s a lot of ground to cover, both geographically and plot-wise. Throw in singing and dancing, and you have one of the most ambitious films of the year, a love-it-or-hate-it experience.

Regrettably, I lean toward the latter. Though the film might become a career-defining moment for Amanda Seyfried, who plays Ann with passionate abandon, the rest of the movie is fraught – and downright difficult to sit through, thanks to its active camera, tonal mismatch and the aforementioned juxtaposition of brutalities and musical numbers, many of which aren’t true songs at all. Instead, composer Daniel Blumberg fashioned them from Shaker hymns, while also writing three originals. Admittedly, this lends the movie an authenticity that would be missing if the filmmakers had opted for a Rodgers and Hammerstein approach. But the melodies, which are almost entirely absent, and the lyrics, which are annoyingly repetitive, make the musical interludes oddly pretentious. (How many times can you hear “I hunger and thirst” in a single song before covering your ears?) Brutal topics have occasionally been the subjects of musicals – as in the greatest stage musical of all time, Les Miserables – but they are an odd fit with Testament.

Most of the fault seems to lie in the writing, which is shocking considering Fastvold wrote the screenplay with her partner, Brady Corbet. They are the team behind last year’s best film, The Brutalist. Considering the brilliance of that project, they deserve a pass here – plus congratulations for swinging for the creative fences, though, in this critic’s opinion, they struck out, robbing the emotional powerhouse of its dramatic impact.

Dialect work is mostly passable and not too distracting, which is just as important as accuracy. Actors attempt a Manchester sound. (And do I detect hints of Original Pronunciation (OP) of Early Modern English?) But, of course, the Manchester dialect was different in the 1700s than it is today. In addition, the American characters, while speaking period dialogue, sport accents that are fairly modern. That’s always the easiest cinematic choice in order to draw easy distinction between Britons and Americans, but it’s not authentic.

Historically, the film makes the odd choice of hardly mentioning the American Revolution for the first couple of years in which Ann was living in and near New York City. As Ken Burns’ new documentary series reminds us, New York was ground zero for the war, especially in the late 1770s. Politics play an important role later in the film, but that only makes their earlier near-absence stranger.

At least the costumes and art direction, the latter relying on real Shaker locations, are spot-on. Plus, the film draws interesting parallels between the birth of a nation and the birth of a religion while hinting at the hypocrisy of the “all men are created equal” mantra when women are not included.

Testament so entirely belongs to Seyfried that other actors are barely noticeable. Thomasin McKenzie (Jojo Rabbit, Last Night in Soho) is memorable as Ann’s confidante and the film’s narrator while Christopher Abbot (James White), as Ann’s husband, does fine work and is one of the few characters who calls out the absurdity of the Shaker precept of no sex.

Lacking the ability to procreate, Shakers slowly dwindled to almost no one in the 19th century. One wishes the film had focused more on the oddities of the religion instead of portraying almost everyone who opposed Ann as an intolerant enemy. After all, though Ann was a pioneer for women’s rights, her visions and many of her actions were not the result of her being the “second coming” of Jesus but instead a product of her mental illness.

Like Shakerism, Testament is unique, ill-conceived and unpleasant.

© 2025 MeierMovies, LLC

For more information on the movie, visit IMDB and Wikipedia. The film has had an extensive festival run and will open in American cinemas on December 25, 2025. It is rated R and runs 2 hours and 10 minutes.