Amanda Siegfried gives a powerful and fearless performance in this drama based on the true story of Ann Lee, the founder of Shaker religious community in 1774 Colonial America. Director/co-writer Mona Fastvold’s historical drama THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE depicts both the life and legend of Ann Lee, the leading light of this religious movement in Britain and then the New World, a faith community known now mostly it’s creation of beautiful practical objects and its lovely hymns, but which also preached gender and social class equality, worshiped through dance and song, and embraced a celibate communal life.
Director Mona Fastvold was inspired to make this historical drama after hearing Shaker songs, and the film is a musical of sorts, with music inspired by Shaker hymns and choreography that recalls the Shakers’ wild religiously ecstatic, whole-body movement way of worship. The musical scenes are striking and integrated logically into the film as moments of worship, using traditional Shaker hymns for choreography by Celia Rowlson-Hall (Vox Lux) that re-imagines the rapturous movements of Shakers rather than strictly recreating them.
Director/co-writer Mona Fastvold and her film-making partner Brady Corbet are the creative team who made THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE, but they were also the creative pair behind last year’s THE BRUTALIST. While the architect character in that film was fictional, Ann Lee was a real person, a historical figure that Fastvold felt deserved more attention, a rare woman religious leader in the late 1700s who rose to head a religious following in England, and then established the religious community in America, just as the country was being born. Like the pair’s previous film, THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE features outstanding cinematography, great acting, and a moving story.
Fastvold leans into the myth and legend of Ann Lee rather than focusing only on facts, although the film is basically historically accurate, apart from a little time shifting for dramatic purposes.
However, it must be said that it is very helpful to already know something about the Shakers beyond that they made beautiful, elegant furniture and wrote a lovely hymn, “Simple Gifts,” that composer Aaron Copeland used in “Appalachian Spring.” The film is light on exposition, despite having a narrator, and really does not give much information on the Shakers until some title cards at the film’s end. Yes, it can be considered a flaw that the film assumes you know more about the Shakers, but a little advance research does enhance the viewing of this ambitious and worthwhile biographical film.
This true story is dramatic, but Amanda Siegfried gives a strikingly raw, no-holds-barred performance as this female religious leader, something very rare then. All this takes place during an era of new utopian religious communities, many of which were drawn to rural Colonial America. People who didn’t fit in to European societies were often drawn to these new faiths.
Thomasin McKenzie narrates, a bit in the style of a myth, the sometimes raw, unblinking, emotional biographical drama. It tells Ann Lee’s story in three parts, beginning with her impoverished childhood in grimy, rough Manchester. The film takes us through Ann Lee’s introduction to and then ascendancy in the British Quaker offshoot then known as the Shaking Quakers, and then to her founding of the Shaker community in Colonial America.
Ann was the second oldest of eight children. With their mother dead, their blacksmith father struggles to make a living, even with a second job as a tailor. Ann and the older children are expected to help out and earn extra cash with little tasks where they can. There is no money for education. Even as a child, Ann is deeply religious, and very close to her younger brother William, and offended and appalled by the sinfulness she see all around her in gritty Manchester.
In the film’s second part, Ann (Amanda Seyfried), now grown, is looking for something more life-changing than the Quaker faith of her family. Hearing about a new branch of the Quakers, called the “Shaking Quakers,” who embrace worshiping through shaking dance and chanting and have more radical beliefs about equality, she and her brother William (Lewis Pullman) seek them out. There they find a spiritual home, and new ideas. Ann also meets the man who became her husband Abraham Standerin (Christopher Abbott). With her fervent belief and charismatic personality, Ann Lee, despite being illiterate, rises in the congregation to become its leader.
In the third part, Ann’s bold, and loud, public worship makes her a target of British authorities, which lands her in jail and an asylum. The persecution ultimately leads her to decide, 1774, to move to Colonial America, along with a group of followers, to establish a utopian Shaker community in rural New York. Meanwhile, after losing all four of her children in birth or shortly after, Ann at the same time concludes that God is telling her that sex is the Original Sin, which leads her proclaim that and tell her followers that renouncing it is the only path to salvation.
This third portion of the film focuses on Ann after this point and as she establishes their utopian Shaker community in pre-Revolutionary, and then Revolutionary, America.
One of the most striking aspects of this film is Amanda Seyfried’s wild, fierce, fearless performance. Be warned that some scenes are unblinkingly, harshly realistic or even, with the birth scenes, bordering on graphic. Another striking aspect are the highly-choreographed singing and dancing sequences. They represent the Shaker’s form of worship, but are certainly not an authentic depiction, although they are beautiful and moving. Yet another aspect to note is the filmmaker’s embrace of myth and tales of Ann Lee almost on an equal footing with the known facts about her, although it mostly follows those.
Still, this is a remarkable film, notable for its visual beauty, remarkable cinematography and powerful performances, making it a film worthy of your time as it throws a spotlight on this too-little known female leader of a religious movement.
THE TESTMENT OF ANN LEE opens in theaters on Friday, Jan. 23, 2026.
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
