In “The Testament of Ann Lee,” two younger Shakers, disciples of revolutionary preacher Mother Ann’s teachings, fail to obey their chief’s main command: Celibacy. Fresh-faced and newly in love, with not a lot else to look ahead to in a darkish, gloomy 18th century New York City, the pair sneak off right into a picket outhouse and commit their faith’s holy sin. Their prophet, the lady who introduced Shakerism from Manchester, England all the way in which to the American colonies in 1774, performed by Amanda Seyfried, learns of the insubordination. There is no flagellation, no phrases of fury or punishment. Just a peaceful instruction that the younger couple should now go away her burgeoning church. “I’m very interested in that,” stated the movie’s director Mona Fastvold in a video name from Los Angeles. “Can you lead without ego? Can you lead without fear or intimidation?”
Ann Lee was born in 1736 and led the Shakers, a splinter Christian group that preached egalitarianism, communal dwelling and celibacy, till her loss of life in 1784 at age 48. The spiritual sect at one level had 6,000 followers. (Today, there are three registered Shakers within the US, with one individual becoming a member of this summer season).
They believed Lee was the second coming of Christ — a radical thought within the 1700s, not least as a result of at the moment in historical past “a lot of men valued their horse more than they valued their wife,” Fastvold stated. The Norwegian director stumbled upon Lee’s story whereas engaged on her second movie, the historic drama “The World to Come,” a lesbian romance within the American frontier throughout the nineteenth century. Fastvold assumed classes on Lee and the Shakers had been taught in US faculties as a part of the curriculum — or at the least frequent data for many Americans — contemplating the rarity of a proto-feminist chief throughout that interval. Once she realized nobody round her had a clue who Lee was, she shortly set about planning how she may make the movie.
Which is no small feat. Earlier this month, Kristen Stewart, who like Fastvold started her profession as an actor however now additionally directs, informed the New York Times she feels the business is a “capitalist hell” with a penchant for sidelining female-centered tales in favor of big-budget studio motion pictures. Did Fastvold agree with Stewart’s condemnation? “I did have a long conversation with her about it as well,” she stated. “It is incredibly challenging to make these kinds of films.” Fastvold’s is an amorphous half musical, half historic epic that is a “cradle to grave” retelling of Lee’s life founding the off-shoot spiritual group, which additionally maps the journey of the Shakers from the UK to the US. It was fully independently funded, and Fastvold, alongside together with her accomplice, “The Brutalist” director Brady Corbet and producer Andrew Morrison, raised cash incrementally — beginning manufacturing as quickly as that they had sufficient individuals on board and constructing momentum from there. “Which is a very stressful way of doing it,” she stated. “Plus, it’s a period piece and it’s a musical and it’s a biopic, which are the three things you’re not supposed to do in Hollywood.”
Speaking at a screening of the movie in London, Seyfried admitted to “not understanding” what it was they had been making at occasions. But “it’s impossible not to trust her,” she stated of Fastvold. In phrases of tackling Lee as a personality, the technicality of an 18th century Mancunian accent, in addition to enjoying somebody who was born nearly 300 years in the past “was terrifying,” Seyfried stated. “And that terror was attractive to me.”
There had been calls for on Seyfried not simply to sing reside — her checklist of musical credit, from “Mama Mia” to “Les Misérables,” show her talents sufficient there — however scream, make “noises I didn’t think I could make,” and memorize big, large-scale choreography for scenes of mass worship that needed to look spontaneous and spiritually possessed. “It’s definitely the most obscure, abstract hole that I got to live in,” she stated.
“I do think this is the kind of character that every actor looks for, and we rarely ever get the opportunity to do it.”
Some is perhaps inclined to label Lee as an early cult chief, together with her excessive views on sexuality, somatic-style worshipping rituals rooted in dance and music in addition to her need to construct a self-sufficient, utopian group exterior of mainstream society. (She was overwhelmed and accused of witchcraft throughout her lifetime, and arrested for treason in 1780 as a result of she refused to signal the oath of allegiance throughout the American Revolution.) But Fastvold had in her thoughts the predatory stereotype of the male cult chief — a personality we’ve arguably seen extra on our screens this 12 months than ever earlier than, in movies like “Opus,” “Honey Don’t!” “Blink Twice” and “Eddington” — and understood that Lee’s story was totally different. “For Ann it wasn’t really about her,” she stated. “It was about creating this space, this community where everyone could feel safe and free to live in a different kind of way.”
She describes Lee’s method of main as “egoless” and “nurturing,” a technique Fastvold thinks about loads in her personal line of labor. “I am the leader of my small community of 250, 300 people that worked on this film,” she stated. “The archetype of the director is absolutely male, right? It’s this tough, domineering man who yells and shouts and everyone is so afraid of him… I don’t look that way. I could never embody that role. I had to just approach it in a very different way.” According to Seyfried, the forged and crew even referred to Fastvold as “Mother Mona.”
That isn’t to say Lee was faultless. She preached strict celibacy, regardless of the actual fact she was already married. In the movie her husband, a blacksmith named Abraham Standerin (performed by Christopher Abbott), watches on in amusing horror as his intercourse life is sacrificed on the altar of piety. She lied to her group about having the ability to learn and write for concern it could forged doubt on her authority, and was nearly childlike in her black-and-white view of the world. But she was additionally a determine stuffed with grey areas — one thing each Seyfried and Fastvold had been eager to discover.
“There are things that I definitely have a hard time identifying with or empathizing with,” stated Fastvold. “I was raised in a secular household. I don’t have a relationship with religion in that way.” In the movie, it’s prompt Lee’s philosophy of abstinence comes from experiencing 4 traumatic childbirths wherein, via quite a lot of stillbirths and toddler deaths, no baby survives. “I could understand how she landed at a place where she was like, ‘You know what? I don’t think this is for me.”
The movie by no means veers into parable, and Lee’s popularity as a prophet is solely fascinating due to Fastvold’s cautious depiction of her as a human. “I love her in the end,” Fastvold stated. “But hopefully you are in dialogue with her ideas, instead of just signing up to Shakerism.” If the registered members depend rises any increased, we’ll have our reply.
“The Testament of Ann Lee” releases December 25 within the US and February 20, 2026 within the UK.