THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE - Review | TIFF 2025

Mona Fastvold's latest film captures the grand scope of an 18th century immigration epic similar to The Brutalist (2024) while serving as a transcendent musical biopic. Featuring such singular and expressive singing/dance choreography that makes the most of the human body/spacing with Daniel Blumberg's bopping and soothing score accompanying it. The rare musical where it serves a purpose from a grounded perspective along with telling the emotionally commanding journey of Ann Lee, who adopts and leads these ritual practices and fights personal persecution from England to America. Amanda Seyfried truly brings her to life in her best performance yet where seeing her deal with trauma and build her courage during the film's first half makes it its strongest point. Even with the end of the film's second half where its plot progression starts feeling slightly loose, an important figure's story has been effectively told in this dark and dazzling musical unlike any other.

Still Courtesy – Searchlight Pictures

During mid-18th century England (specifically in Manchester), Ann Lee (portrayed by Amanda Seyfried) always felt a disconnect growing up within a community capable of persecuting those that don't stick to the accepted traditions. That's until she discovers a religious group, known as the Shakers, who partake in connecting/healing through extravagant and peculiar manners of singing and dancing. After Ann Lee is married off to Abraham (portrayed by Christopher Abbott) and goes through several traumatic experiences, she rebels and becomes the leader of the Shakers in the hopes of converting more people to the group to build a stronger and less closed-off community. When England keeps rejecting the group's ideals/practices, Ann Lee and her followers including Mary (portrayed by Thomasin McKenzie) and her brother William (portrayed by Lewis Pullman) venture off to a place where she believes the group will be more embraced, none other than America before becoming independent.

Making independent low-budget films feel like classic big-budget epics is something Brady Corbet certainly proved with his magnum-opus, The Brutalist (2024). Now, his partner Mona Fastvold takes on the director's chair with The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) with Corbet returning as a co-writer/producer. Thankfully, she certainly proves to be capable of achieving the same grandiose feeling in both similar and very different ways. Where Corbet’s vision was architectural and austere, Fastvold’s is fluid and corporeal—a portrait of belief and movement expressed through the physical language of music and dance. Her film occupies a rare space between historical reconstruction and transcendental musical biopic, transforming the story of the Shaker sect’s founder into something at once intimate and cosmic.

What sets The Testament of Ann Lee apart is its remarkable use of choreography and performance as narrative engines rather than ornamental flourishes. Each sequence of song and movement feels inseparable from the characters’ emotional and spiritual states. Fastvold’s direction places extraordinary emphasis on the human body—its tension, rhythm, and release—while Daniel Blumberg’s score oscillates between percussive intensity and delicate stillness. His compositions seem to breathe alongside the performers, allowing the music to serve not as backdrop but as a living, responsive presence. It’s the rare musical where the singing and dancing emerge organically from lived experience rather than theatrical artifice.

At the heart of this richly textured work is Amanda Seyfried, delivering what may be the most nuanced performance of her career. As Ann Lee, she embodies both visionary fervor and human fragility, charting a path from personal trauma toward spiritual transcendence. The film’s first half, which traces her persecution in England and her eventual voyage to the New World, contains Fastvold’s most affecting filmmaking to date. Seyfried’s gradual transformation—hesitant gestures giving way to assured, ecstatic motion—anchors the film’s mystical currents in something palpably human. Her portrayal captures the cost of faith as much as its liberation.

While the film’s second half occasionally loses narrative momentum, expanding its scope at the expense of the emotional precision that defines its opening acts, the overarching impact remains undeniable. Fastvold achieves something rare: a period piece that feels both historically grounded and spiritually transcendent. The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) reimagines the musical as a medium of revelation—a dark, dazzling vision where art, devotion, and identity merge into one continuous act of becoming. By its haunting finale, Fastvold has not merely dramatized an important figure’s life but resurrected her spirit through cinema itself.

Verdict

9/10

Still Courtesy – Searchlight Pictures