An extraordinary woman, shuffled off into the margins of history, is gifted ecstatic new life in The Testament of Ann Lee. And, best of all, it’s a musical – of shuddering, percussive breaths; the yowl of the electric guitar; and the soft, vibrating thuds of hands smacking flesh in self-soothing repetition. Together, they tell the story of Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), the prophet of the 18th-century Shaker movement, whose belief that she was the second coming of Christ offered a vision of equality of gender and race, of pacifism and community.
As a film, it’s both faithful and thrillingly iconoclastic. It revives the tradition of painted backdrops, alongside William Rexer’s rich cinematography on 35mm film stock, while reinterpreting Shaker worship, songs and dances that varied between uncontrolled emotional outbursts and symbolic gesture, through a modern, abstract style by composer Daniel Blumberg and choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall.
