The Testament of Ann Lee (2025)
Directed by Mona Fastvold
The extraordinary true legend of Ann Lee, founder of the devotional sect known as the Shakers, who preached gender and social equality and was revered by her followers as the female Christ.
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20 films that influenced The Testament of Ann Lee
What critics say influenced The Testament of Ann Lee
En otros, el sufrimiento y la exaltación mística evocan la crueldad emocional del cine de Lars von Trier, particularmente en Dancer in the Dark.
Like “Dancer in the Dark” (2000), it’s not interested in the musical genre as escapism but as an emotional immersion, means of expression for cracked personalities and a discomforting experience.
On first watch, the film it reminded me of the most was Lars von Trier’s cursed digi musical, Dancer in the Dark (2000), in the way it juxtaposes the pain of human suffering with the levity of music and dance.
En ciertos momentos, la intensidad de las ceremonias recuerda al fervor inquietante de The Witch de Robert Eggers o a la dimensión ritualista de Midsommar de Ari Aster.
…the vision is akin to MIDSOMMAR, when Florence Pugh’s Dani screams and heaves in synchrony with members of the commune…
…or the group sharing of emotions and breathing from “Midsommar” (2019) among many other images that are normally associated with witches…
It’s like The Witch meets Andrei Rublev meets “Rhythm Nation.”
…spiritually rapturous character portraits from the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky (Andrei Rublev), Terrence Malick (A Hidden Life), or Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc)…
The Testament of Ann Lee is "The VVitch plus The Brutalist", which was Fastvold and Corber's immediately-preceding collaboration (Corbet directed that one), and I'm kind of astonished by how much the two films feel like companion pieces.
One would be right to draw connections between The Testament of Ann Lee and The Brutalist (2024), cowritten by Fastvold. Ann’s epic voyage is rooted in the same earnest, earth-shaking desire to create a better world, a trope touted inThe Brutalist. This new film is perhaps a harsher look at what stakes are at play in this unmistakably American pursuit.
Where “The Brutalist” was an examination of the crumbling American dream through the prism of architectural self-immolation, “The Testament of Ann Lee” sees its own horrors in the westward journey to build a monument towards devotional endurance in a more chaotic physical fashion.
Recently learning that Brady Corbet, who made the wildly over rated pretentious Oscar bait film THE BRUTALIST, some how makes me understand what happened - except that when ANN LEE works it's light years ahead of THE BRUTALIST.
After the success of The Brutalist, they’ve co-written the screenplay again, but now Fastvold is in the director’s chair, and there’s a certain similarity in tone between the two films. Both challenge, surprise and confront.
He won an Academy Award for his work on Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (which was co-written by Fastvold, and Corbet returns the favour here)…
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…spiritually rapturous character portraits from the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky (Andrei Rublev), Terrence Malick (A Hidden Life), or Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc)…
Think of the famed Star Gate sequence from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but instead of consciousness-warping interstellar travel, it’s Old English disciples of the cloth donning grubby muslin and jerking along to druidic chants.
If Lars von Trier cut his dramatic dissonance and dreary outlook with the literarily lively indie-folk of the Decemberists on a distaff and specifically religious Tommy, it would resemble The Testament of Ann Lee.
Like “Equus” (both the stage play and the 1977 Sidney Lumet film), this depicts how a steady stream of religious imagery, and a sharp contrast to it, creates an inner disturbance.
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The film feels like director Fastvold watched some of films from Peter Greenaway I keep going back to NIGHTWATCHING) and then tried to replicate or riff on the style, but did so without giving us characters.
Fastvold stages the worship in sequences that would normally be part of a horror movie like “Antichrist” (2009) with people emerging out of the woods in a strange way…