The Testament of Ann Lee

Amanda Seyfried stars as Ann Lee, an Eighteenth Century Englishwoman who founded the Shakers, a Christian group. From a young age she had religious visions. As a young woman she attended various Christian services, trying to find her Church. Maybe it was like seekers today who attend arena-sized churches with charismatic preachers and Christian pop music.

Have you had moments in your life when you ask yourself, what is happening…what just happened…what does this mean? I’ll give you an example from my life. One warm day, I was strolling through a park-like neighborhood when I came upon a live fish on the sidewalk. Huh?! I guessed that the fish, about the size and dimensions of a slipper, had slipped the grip of a fishing raptor. No blood on the creature, fortunately. I grabbed the very much alive and wriggly animal and transported them to a pond about three-bus lengths away. I know, I’m saintly. I researched online and learned that there are fish which, with tiny lurches across the land, migrate to other ponds. This one was a walking catfish. Weird. Mystery solved.

Watching The Testament of Ann Lee, I had similar feelings. What is happening…what just happened…what does this mean? The filmmakers take an unconventional approach. The movie is a musical, albeit there is a lot more dialog than song. And the songs usually consist of just a few lines, refrained again and again.

Co-written by director Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet, the movie begins with Thomasin McKenzie as Ann’s friend, Mary, standing before the camera narrating. Here, the technique seems used to fill-in narrative gaps that the story should have been showing us.

Born in 1736 in Manchester, Ann is a child worker in the early days of industrialization. She works in a wool mill with one of her eight siblings. She has religious visions. Brought on by too much work and too little food? Who knows. As a young woman, Ann works in an infirmary. Instead of going to music clubs with friends, like a Mancunian might do in modern times, she gravitates to church services.

A Quaker couple, Jane and James Wardley, host religious raves at their spacious home. They say that dancing and singing will bring people closer to God by cleansing themselves of sin. I wonder how much dancing a person would have to do to repent for, say, shoplifting.

People also offer testimony, in which they confess their sins. One young man stands to confess to lustful thoughts. He reports that his body quaked like a split peach. Not sure what that looks like- my peaches have always been docile. The man begins to tremble in place; maybe because he is embarrassed. Things get weirder when a woman pushes her way to the guy and takes his arm—to offer help? No, she screams in wildly fluctuating pitches. Instead of anyone calling 999, they all begin dancing and singing a song in which the only lyrics are la la la.

Ann meets Abraham while dancing, and just like when you meet someone at the club, things don’t necessarily work out. But the couple have a deejay-got-us-falling-in-love experience and marry. Or maybe she was pushed into it by family and custom.

Ann is miserable. Their sex life is defined by the husband. He shows her a book he got from some guy at the smith where he works.  It’s full of S&M porn etchings. I don’t know if there is an actual account from Ann Lee of this, but the movie shows her submitting unhappily to being thrashed with what could be dried wheat sheaves. It gets worse! Ann has baby after baby, and we see gory childbirth scenes. Tragically, her children all succumb to the diseases that took out little children before vaccines and public sanitation.

Poor Ann has a breakdown and her husband brings her to the infirmary-insane asylum. The infirmary looks like the kind of set design done for Eponine’s death scene in Les Miz. Ann gets well enough to get out of her straw bed and tells her brother William that she never should have gotten married and certainly not have had sex, because, she has come to the conclusion, sexual relations are ungodly.

Who knows if Ann was divinely inspired or grasping at reasons to live after the devastating losses of her children, but she becomes an evangelist. She doesn’t like the dogmatic, non-dancing ways of the Protestant churches. She seizes on something that her mentors had declared: Jesus’ second coming will be in the form of a woman. God has told her that she is the new incarnation, according to her, anyway. Weirdly, she is apparently not Jesus’ sister because she tells people that she is married to God. I think that Catholic nuns are supposed to be brides of Christ. Maybe.

Ann’s quaking Shaker Church is off to a good start. Instead of typical stuff like quiet prayer and self-flagellation, she throws dance parties. It’s not long before the neighbors make noise complaints. She even gets thrown into prison! I’m not sure if it’s because of violating the community noise standards or because of her lady-preaching. While in gaol (cool, old timey spelling of jail), her husband and fellow Shakers call up to her window that they have a basket of provisions for her. No, she shouts, she just wants to pray. Owing perhaps to hypoglycemia and/or dehydration, she starts having delusions aka visions. She gets out of jail, according to the narrator, because she spoke in twelve different tongues, including Greek, Latin, Hebrew and French. All this in the days before DuoLingo!

Back at home Ann tells her husband that they’ll have to be celibate. He looks quite disappointed. She sighs and says, Well, it’s what God wants. Lol, he doesn’t have a comeback to that. Ann turns her attention to her brother William, and tells him he should cut his long hair. I don’t know if she had a vision about that or that she just thinks he’d look better with short hair. He agrees and scissors off much of his hair. Lo and behold, I now recognize him as Lewis Pullman, son of actor Bill Pullman aka the U.S. president in Independence Day.

In spite of hecklers and the threat of imprisonment, Ann keeps evangelizing. As you might imagine, a woman saying she’s the second coming, is not popular in her day. In 1774, she and her small band of followers head to the Americas. On the ship’s journey, they annoy the sailors with their singing. The sailors hurl invective at the noisy worshippers. Even the captain implores them to quiet down. He is probably a fan of the men’s usual sea shanties.

Upon arriving in New York, Ann’s husband elects to stay behind. I wasn’t surprised because he looked irked the entire trip, especially when the others bestowed the honorific Mother on Ann. It goes unsaid, but understood, that he’ll be looking into ye olde Tinder when not blacksmithing.

Ann and company, hire a boat to take them up the Hudson to Albany. Probably a good idea, as land is cheaper upstate. Still true. Much adventure awaits them. There’s a little skirmish called the American Revolution. Sadly, Ken Burns’ exhaustive documentary, The American Revolution, does not venture into Niskayuna to see the utopia that Ann was creating. One of her followers got a twitchy finger and was led to the land. Maybe, I wondered, the vision was not religious and instead a civic vision of the Albany Airport that would one day juxtapose the Shaker Village in Colonie.

The movie is strange. The musical aspect is truly awkward. And no one ever says anything that doesn’t have to do with their burning religious fervor.  Maybe that was the case. But the biggest oversight is that the Shakers’ greatest legacy is barely touched upon: their awesome, simple-lined wood furniture style. They made high-quality baskets too. But the narrator just makes some throwaway comment about how locals appreciated the Shakers’ woodworking.  I have to admit, by that time in the movie I was wondering how much longer before it wrapped up. So, I did have my interest piqued with the shot of a man planing some wood.

Speaking of wrapping up… The Testament of Ann Lee is perhaps best seen as a performance art film. As for figuring out the film, good luck. But at least now you know about those weird walking fish. What would Ann have made of that?!

P.S. Ann Lee founded the Shaker religion. It retained aspects of Quaker beliefs: gender equality, pacifism, and community. Ann taught that the Holy Spirit was purifying worshippers while dancing. She advocated celibacy and no marriage. Ann and her followers worked to perfect their utopian community. Members traveled through New York and New England, searching for converts.

 

Movie Loon Movie Review Shortcut:

Grade:  C

Cut to the Chase:  Heartfelt performance by Amanda Seyfried as Ann Lee. I don’t admire the movie, but I admire the effort. If you like musicals, give it a try.

Humor Highlight: After her brother cuts his hair, he bursts into song. As one does.