At the beginning of “The Testament of Ann Lee,” revelers make their way through a forest. As they move, they sing and chant, their bodies erupting with abrupt, almost violent spurts of movement. The narrator, Mary (Thomasin McKenzie), a follower of the Shaker religion and a close confidant of its founder, Ann Lee, begins to share her testimony. It almost feels as though you’re being recruited for something — something rapturous, something glorious.
Directed by Mona Fastvold and co-written by Fastvold and Brady Corbet, “The Testament of Ann Lee’ relays the story of the Shakers’ founder (portrayed by Amanda Seyfried) from her humble beginnings in Manchester, England to her eventual status as one of the most radical religious figures of the 18th century. The Shakers — splintering off from the Quakers — practiced celibacy (a doctrine straight from the Mother Ann herself), believed in social and gender equality for all people, and were pacifists. But they are perhaps best remembered for their fierce, ecstatic movement in song and dance during worship.
“The Testament of Ann Lee” has been described as a musical, but in Fastvold’s film, the music and choreography feel far more like a tone poem of sorts — bursts of movement and sound meant to express emotions that are not so easily put into words, particularly in the oppressive and harsh society Ann and her cohort inhabit. That movement is particularly mesmerizing, but “The Testament of Ann Lee” is most striking in its insistence on viewing its subjects strictly in the context of their own time. Hauntingly modern in its visuals yet divorced from modernity at the same time, “The Testament of Ann Lee” is a story about the nature of community and belief, about suffering and joy in equal measure.
Ann’s journey to becoming Mother Ann (whom the Shakers believed was the second coming of Christ) is rooted in her declaration that fornication is the primary sin for which Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden, the idea of which came to her during a vision while she was imprisoned. But in the film, the truth of Ann’s commitment to celibacy stems from a thorny, pain-ridden relationship with sex. In one scene, a young Ann watches her father rut on top of her mother, covering her mouth with one rough hand to keep her silent. When she calls her father out at breakfast the next morning, she’s lashed across her hands for her insolence. When she is married to Abraham (Christopher Abbott), she indulges in his preferred version of sex (kinky, by 18th century standards) to make him happy. She gets pregnant four times. Each child dies.
Ann takes this pattern as a punishment, her due suffering for engaging in original sin. From that suffering arises the Shakers, which, with celibacy at the forefront, understandably attracts people who have varyingly complex relationships with intimacy. At the beginning of the film, we’re introduced to a would-be Shaker who admits to having improper thoughts about his underage sister. Ann’s brother William (Lewis Pullman) is attracted to men. Those two things are not the same, but from an 18th century frame of mind, you can see why both people might have been drawn to the idea of cutting sex out of the equation all together.
“With nothing left to lose, Ann boldly converted her suffering to evangelism.” This is probably the most honest thing that our narrator, Mary (her voiceover continues throughout the film, contributing to the film’s mythic quality) says about Ann. Religion often operates this way, a group of people trying to find a reason behind their hardship, trying to find a community who understands that pain. Watching Ann’s story from a contemporary point of view, it’s easy to become wrapped up in the sadness that permeates through it, to ruminate on what she willingly gives up in the name of God. When her niece, Nancy (Viola Prettejohn) falls in love and aims to be married, Ann forces her to leave the Shakers. Her religious ties are stronger than her familial ones.
But, while the film doesn’t shy away from that complexity, it also forces you to reckon with how the Shakers would have provided an outlet for oppressed and repressed people to process emotions they have no words for. Where Ann and the others find ecstasy is song and dance — and those sequences are as orgasmic as they come, characterized by forceful, joyful, passionate movement. Through the camera and through Celia Rowlson-Hall’s choreography, Fastvold so clearly expresses this form of worship’s ties to sexuality. In one scene, Ann raised high and sensuously draped across her writhing revelers, she evokes the sinful images of Adam and Eve that came to her in her vision. Seyfried is splendid throughout “The Testament of Ann Lee,” but the way she infuses her body with tension and release in her dance is hypnotizing. The camera focuses primarily on her face, but every time you see her hands or another part of her body, rigid with hunger and yearning, it makes you long to see her entire physical performance in all its glory.
The tension between the audience’s modern sensibility and Fastvold’s commitment to looking at the past with time period accuracy is exactly what makes “The Testament of Ann Lee” such a fascinating object. The character of William is perhaps one of the better examples of that tension. William never outwardly expresses his desire for men, or delivers a wordy monologue about the anxiety or pain that desire causes him — as so many period films or television shows that try to incorporate queer characters do. Instead, he transfers all of that feeling into his worship, into his belonging in a group that holds relatively progressive beliefs compared to the rest of society.
It’s easy to look at Ann, and William, and other Shakers and find tragedy in the circumstances that led them to find each other. But “The Testament of Ann Lee” forces you to witness their exaltation, to experience their unbridled joy at finding somewhere they can express themselves with no shame.
“The Testament of Ann Lee” is in theaters starting Jan. 16.
