Movie Review: 'The Testament of Ann Lee' a Charismatic Puzzle

This offbeat musical is a fascinating noble failure

Ann Lee was born in England in 1736 and died in America — Watervliet, New York, according to Wikipedia — in 1784. During her 48 years on Earth she became revered as a religious figure, a founding leader of the Shakers (a Quaker faction whose worship involved ecstatic dance) and, rather astonishingly, a sort of emissary of God if not the actual Second Coming of Christ.

(Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee. Searchlight Pictures)

Amanda Seyfried brings Lee to life in Mona Fastvold’s film The Testament of Ann Lee, a hybrid of biopic and musical that follows Lee from childhood (where she conceived a dislike of sexual relations by observing her parents having intercourse) to her marriage (to Abraham Standerin, played by Christopher Abbott, a blacksmith like her father and a man with what would probably have been considered at the time to be exotic erotic tastes) to her career as a preacher. Seeking to grow the membership of her controversial fellowship, Ann led a contingent of Shakers to the New World — first to Massachusetts, then to the state of New York Unsurprisingly, both her religious convictions (she was a pacifist at the time of the American revolution) and her gender drew hostility. (There’s something unsettlingly contemporary about a scene in which a gang of brutes, while attacking Lee’s nascent community, jump to the erroneous conclusion that she must be a man dressing as a woman.)

(Amanda Seyfried and Lewis Pullman in The Testament of Ann Lee. Searchlight Pictures)

Accompanying Lee on her trajectory through history is her brother William (Lewis Pullman), whose devotion to her is rooted in childhood. William is so completely invested in Lee’s teaching that he, along with the rest of the tiny sect, forsakes sex. William is depicted as gay, and there’s a cursory breakup scene in which he swears off his male lover in order to embrace Lee’s teachings. In a way, that scene sums up the entire film: The story feels rushed, the characterizations incomplete, the flow choppy, and the story beats scattershot. Still, as noble failures go, The Testament of Ann Lee is one of the most intriguing of 2025. It’s a musical, though one in which the songs land somewhere between the traditional musical (where the singing is an externalization of emotional states) and diegetic illustrations of faith; the singing is as much a part of the film’s depiction of Shaker worship as is the dance (which is, by the way, choreographed by Celia Rowlson-Hall). Daniel Blumberg’s compositions are deceptively simple, but they possess a complexity that lets them wrap around the narrative, and some of them are downright catchy. Seyfried and Pullman are both remarkable in their roles, and Fastvold somehow makes the movie’s disparate components fit together, but you may find yourself feeling like you have strayed into a house of worship just in time for a celebration carried out in a language, and from a dogma, that’s utterly foreign. It’s compelling to watch… but its spirit remains elusive.

“The Testament of Ann Lee” is playing now in theaters.