Melding powerful and emotive choreography with rhythmically propulsive music built out from recontextualised hymns, The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) is an intoxicating musical biopic like no other, creating a singular theatrical experience that will have you asking more from the genre. Centred on the fascinating movement of the Shakers, the 18th-century religious group known for their ecstatic dancing, Mona Fastvold’s exploration into humanity, ambition, and religion in a moment of turmoil and potential is an unexpected revelation in cinema this year.
The film operates as a probing look into personal religion and how it can be expanded into a community, with Fastvold exploding the potential of the story into a wild and emotive musical that feels grounded in the power of the Shaker movement through its choreography and music. At the heart of it all is the titular Ann Lee, the rare female religious leader whose story is easily worth an emotive and expressionistic biopic starring one of the industry’s best actors in Amanda Seyfried. Spurred by unimaginable grief and some notable, potentially queer subtext, Ann is devoted to becoming a prophet of the Shakers she has found herself the leader of, seeing the act of celibacy as a key tenet of driving away sin, even as the movement is built on the overwhelming sense of religious community born out of dance and bodily movement.
Ann’s decision to shift the movement towards celibacy can only be accepted for so long by the large community in Manchester, as well as her husband, Abraham (Christopher Abbott), a simple man who will walk with her to the edge of his faith, but not beyond his human desires. Staying by Ann’s side through it all is her brother William (Lewis Pullman) and close friend Mary (Thomasin McKenzie), who also serves as the film’s narrator in one of the best uses of lengthy expositional narration in years.
Remixed from Shaker hymns, composer Daniel Blumberg follows up award-winning work on Fastvold’s previous film, The Brutalist (2024), with a starkly different collection of music, combining beautifully with the ensemble’s choreography that always stays within the realm of absurd realism that the Shakers are known for. Seyfried allows the melodies to transcend the screen, using the repetitions of the hymns as a hypnotic bedrock to build out some exalted musical numbers.
Working previously as a co-writer on her partner Brady Corbet’s standout film The Brutalist, Fastvold’s film works as a fascinating companion piece of equal quality. Both Ann Lee and The Brutalist are fixated on ambitious figures that see potential in the pursuit of America, believing themselves to be called to a higher purpose in some form, with the faith that this purpose will shield them from the dangers that lie ahead. While Corbet’s film echoes its protagonist’s mode of deliberate architecture (as its namesake) to tell its wider story of faith, religion, and pursuit, Fastvold’s film moves with the grace of fresh silk and dance.
The Testament of Ann Lee transcends the bounds of its screen when the small group manage to obtain passage by boat to New York, with an extraordinary piece of montage, choreography and music as good as any you’ll find this decade. Fastvold’s exploration of the newly American striver through the unique lens of an upstart religious sect in England, stymied by the lack of progressive thinking at home, is swept up in the power of the musical genre at its best, with Seyfried commanding the helm with a mixture of mania and overwhelming grace.
She contends with this part of the film in a complex understanding of many sides to the Shaker history of driven American conquest. The group see America as untoiled land, perhaps more accepting of a female preacher and of their unconventional worship practices. As they arrive in New York, however, they are almost immediately confronted by a slave auction, which Ann sees as barbaric sin; she is here to cleanse in her mission to expand the movement.
A story of finding divine ambition in community and connection, Ann Lee feels powerfully tied to many period-set ‘Great Men’ films like There Will Be Blood (2007), but shown through a woman’s lens. With a pivotal montage of the Shakers building their housing and village, we see Ann less as a wise prophet and that of project manager and architect, reflecting many scenes in The Brutalist, bathed in hopeful sunlight and warm wooden surroundings. Rarely have we seen such a powerful set of companion stories, especially ones filmed so similarly and with equal ambition.
But this is not just a film of personal ambition built on grief and personal turmoil; it is crucially a film driven by ideas of faith and religion. This may steer off many an agnostic cinemagoer in ways Fastvold and Corbet’s previous film didn’t (although that film is as Jewish in nature as this film is Christian); to open your heart to the story is no different than the task given to an audience in many films.
As difficult a proposition as this film is for audiences, the lack of Academy recognition Fastvold and her collaborators received this awards season is surprising. It is especially difficult to reckon with as The Testament of Ann Lee is a more intelligently woven story of ambition and grief than the walloping Hamnet (2025), which received eight nominations. For those crying out for individual voices still striving to work with Hollywood studios, you simply have to witness this fascinating and engrossing film from a truly singular voice.
The Testament of Ann Lee is in select theatres now.
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