The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold, 2025)
4/5
i find myself not really sure what to think about this one. it feels like it's going for a naturalistic portrayal with the dim candlelight for so many of the indoor scenes, à la Eggers' The Witch, but the highly choreographed dance numbers telegraph the artifice of it all (and Amanda Seyfried's face is definitely one that has seen a cell phone before). the songs in the first half are primarily soundtrack, but after they set sail for America they begin to be sung by the characters. the songs themselves are just on the edge of being cloying, simple choral harmonies and rounds, soundtracked primarily by the highly syncopated rhythm of the characters beating their chests as they dance (which, to be fair, does seem characteristic of actual ecstatic dancing i've seen- just never so many people doing it in unison), it stays just on the right side of the "action in the trailer synced to the music" trope that's grown so tiresome over the last few years. and the synchronized, repetitive movements call to mind the communal wailing of Aster's Midsommar, giving it a distinctly fascist feeling that I don't think the film was going for-- except for a brief shot at the end, with the Shaker colony well established, of children wearing cotton masks in their mill, mirroring Ann's childhood doing the same thing, which she sought so desperately to escape. there was also almost a wildness to the dancing, and singing or sometimes just screaming, or sometimes speaking in tongues, at one point at night, with a character saying "this is our altar", that made it feel distinctly homey to me as a pagan, which was just foreshadowing for Ann's brother Matthew bringing home a tract he picked up of someone calling them a bunch of pagans (derogatory), which she of course went to pains to say they weren't, obviously. but it's strange to see something that looks so much, in some ways, like how i would ideally like to practice my religion, if i had more physical energy and the community to support it, while knowing how far the practice being depicted actually is from what i would do.
i think, on balance, that i do appreciate that the film both took Ann's visions seriously, and showed the genuine comfort and solace she and her followers took in their faith, while also showing that life as a member of a fundamentalist sect is not always that great! i also really appreciated watching a movie, on the 4th of July, set partially during the American revolution, about staunch pacifists who refused to fight (and were, indeed, jailed for it).
also, just as a very personal bit of nitpickiness, when they noted a terrifying dark day, specifically on May 19, 1780, and showed a solar eclipse happening, i went to look up that eclipse like any good astrologer would, and it didn't exist! there was a lunar eclipse on May 18, but that's obviously not what was going on there. after doing a bit of wiki-diving i learned that what is known as "New England's Dark Day" was caused by a mix of wildfire smoke, cloud cover, and fog, and was so dark that people needed candles to see indoors at noon, and lasted through to the night. portraying it as a relatively swift solar eclipse (totality only lasts a few minutes!), the date and time of which likely would have been well-known in farmer's almanacs, really undersells the fright people must have felt, with some recorded as having thought it was actually Judgement Day.