REEL | Amanda Seyfried Shakes 'The Testament of Ann Lee' x TIFF 2025

"All will be clear on the crystal glass of morrow."

Toronto International Film Festival

Norwegian independent filmmaker Mona Fastvold, alongside her The Brutalist director husband Brady Corbet as co-writer/producer, directs another ambitious period biographical drama in The Testament of Ann Lee. Starring Amanda Seyfried as the eponymous pious founding leader of the Shakers religious movement (itself an offshoot of Shaking Quakerism) in the eighteenth-century, the film uses quasi-musical elements and choreography employed in the utopian Christian faith's worshiping practices to tell its historical origins.

Seyfried, as the charismatic, cult-like leader, mesmerizes and convincingly conveys the power of the real-life figure as seen through her devoted followers, played by the likes of Lewis Pullman (her brother), Thomasin McKenzie (also the narrator), Christopher Abbott (her husband), Stacy Martin, and Tim Blake Nelson. Employing folk elements to express the group's celibate, communal practices, it occasionally becomes a hallucinatory experience.

From the smoky streets of Manchester under the influence of the Church of England to the wilderness of New York State, the mesmerizing film builds out the devotional Christian sect's fictionized origins as a radically self-sustaining society based on forgiveness, understanding, and pacifist practices. It's a strangely euphoric cinematic encapsulation of the meaningful, other-worldly ecstasy experienced by religious followers confirmed in their belief in the love of their higher power.

While The Testament of Ann Lee's audaciously grand vision of a religious musical fable does suffer from the usual drawbacks of packing an important historical figure's entire life into a digestible two hours while trying to keep short but significant moments entertaining, Fastvold's creatively speculative direction and pacing keep the film relatively seamless. After all, I, too, would also probably blindly follow Amanda Seyfried anywhere.

The Testament of Ann Lee screened at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Special Presentations program.


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