This becomes Ann’s new family, and the dance sequences that follow are truly transcendent. Seyfried and her co-stars commit, body and soul, moving with a kind of possessed single-mindedness, ferocity, and abandon that seems to reach out of the screen, grab you by the scruff of your neck, and drag you along with them.
The music, too, is magical. For those allergic to the genre, let me clarify that this is not quite a sung-through musical, but rather a film with songs, and these tunes are, broadly, folksy, stilted, and haunting—traditional Shaker spirituals expertly reimagined by Blumberg. (Keep your eyes peeled for an extended cameo from the composer later on, as well.) One or two of the hymns, as sung by the angelic Seyfried, feel a little Disney-fied, certainly (some may get Mamma Mia!-slash-Les Misérables flashbacks), but these head-spinning set pieces are also, by and large, the movie’s strongest moments.
Soon, Ann meets her future husband, a tough-as-nails blacksmith (a brooding Christopher Abbott), just like her father, with whom she gives birth to a string of children. It all ends in heartbreak, and the montage that summarizes this chapter of her life is brutally economical, an excruciating and tonally masterful rollercoaster of false promise and unbelievable suffering. It lands Ann at her lowest point—but her faith eventually lifts her out of it, and she achieves a sort of sainthood.
This first hour flies by; the same is not true of the second. Ann and her acolytes journey to America to find more followers—a portion of the tale that feels more adrift but then finds its footing, largely thanks to another musical interlude. But once they reach the New World, what began as a breathless sprint turns into a bit of a slog.
Interesting questions are raised regarding Ann’s continued illiteracy, defections among her friends and family, and accusations of treason, given that she’s a British transplant spreading her own gospel at a time when the nation is fighting the colonial oppression of King George III. But The Testament of Ann Lee can’t seem to decide what to focus on. Instead, it falls into a by-the-numbers recounting of Ann’s story until we reach a confoundingly anti-climactic conclusion. What is this film trying to say, about Ann, this sect, and this moment in history? I have no idea, and I’m not fully convinced that Fastvold and Corbet know, either.