TIFF 50: Musical mayhem in "The Testament of Ann Lee"

by Cláudio Alves

Why do we make musicals? What compels us to sing and dance our emotions, our spirits, our many meanings? Is it the communion of making yourself heard and seen by others? Is it the need to be witnessed? Does it have anything to do with a search for what lies beyond our everyday lives, an exuberant gesture reaching toward transcendence? It could be all of these possibilities at once or none whatsoever. Perhaps it's the same thing that compelled the Quakers to shake. By telling the story of Ann Lee, the founding mother of the Shaker sect, Mona Fastvold draws parallels between the two, studying, testing, and preaching the form of the musical, much like some might proselytize the Bible's teachings. 

The result is a movie musical like few others, a complicated mess of ideas and wild impulses, animated by a spirit unbound, unafraid to alienate or risk ridicule. The Testament of Ann Lee is, without a doubt, one of the most fascinating films of the fall festival season and, since experiencing it at TIFF 50, I haven't been able to stop thinking about what Fastvold wrought…

Despite its title and premise, it should be noted that The Testament of Ann Lee is not a biopic. At least, not in the traditional sense. Because, though Fastvold's camera oft revolves around the charismatic leader of the title, her film forms no likeness of this person as hero or foe or a biographical object of study. Instead of being about a woman who inspired others in 18th-century England and Americas, it's about what she inspired in those who believed in her. It's about what she meant, not who she was or might have been. Fittingly, the viewer is forever kept at a distance from their subject, separated by the device of narration that tells of Ann Lee as perceived by an acolyte.

Through that telling, The Testament of Ann Lee starts at the dawn of the Shakers, in 1750s Manchester. In a manner that's almost conventional at first glance, it follows her first days in the church and her gradual rise into leadership as the woman they described as being clothed by the sun with the moon under her feet. Christ will return as a woman, we are taught, for God must be male and female. And this is she, played by Amanda Seyfried with feverous zealotry, always intense, no matter where she stands. Be it as an apt pupil listening awe-struck, in the torture of miscarriage, the birth of a woman's hatred for her own flesh, spreading truths or shaking for God, she's a vision.

But since the film introduced its musical conceit before it even showed its leading lady as the adult Ann, she's not the one leading us toward the spectacle of singing belief. Instead, Fastvold posits the musical form as something larger than ourselves, something that has always been there, waiting to manifest among the faithful, guiding them according to its own divine purpose. When it erupts, fully-formed, it's difficult not to surrender. Across scenes of ecstatic worship that resemble ink spilled over copper mirrors, the camera roves, flies, and dances, becoming one with those whose bodies come together in God's love, whose voices rise to the heavens above. 

It's not all grace, however, as the mention of miscarriage and self-loathing already suggested. From costume to set to makeup and music sensibility, this is a spectacle designed for grit and credence rather than more rigorous realism or dramatic restraints or beatific purities. All those, along with historical accuracy, have their place, but it's somewhere else than Fastvold's cinema. And is that so wrong? I think not. So, smear that mud on your face and open wounds, let violence escape the social norms of a past epoch to hit modern audiences right where it hurts. In the end, it all comes back to the musical form, its excesses and its lies that tell the truth, no matter how unorthodox The Testament of Ann Lee might seem. 

And strange it is, from top to bottom and every station of the cross in between. The same way its study of the Shakers plunges deep into the body's ability for expressing the ineffable, The Testament of Ann Lee also shares a paradoxical fear of the flesh. Consider the frenzies, which look, for all to see, like the most riotous bacchanalia. Nevertheless, they're chaste. At one point, it's almost as if these folks sing because they can't fuck, illustrating that Freed Unit idiom where the consummation of passion was not copulation but the orgasmic dance break. Adrenaline, too, suggests musical expression, as when a man's epiphany leads to a running sing-along, or when an eclipse's terrifying sight introduces a guitar riff into Daniel Blumberg's score.

Rather than resolve these tensions, Fastvold lets them hang there, mutinously unwell alike Ann Lee herself, exulting cinema's haptic qualities, its sensuality, while running away from carnal properties in a trauma-induced panic. For all her perspicacious gaze, the director isn't too interested in solving the inconsistencies or potential hypocrisies in Shaker doctrine or the woman who led them into new lives. She's similarly disinclined toward psychological portraiture in modern dramatic terms, preferring to glean the mystery rather than lose herself and her film in a futile attempt at explaining it. Honestly, it shouldn't work, and at times, the film falls victim to its web of contradictions.

Yet, the wealth of ideas is so heady as to inspire a drunkard's delight in those willing to accept all Fastvold has to give. Which is a lot, even if you try to establish a comparison to other works in hopes of finding order like the drowning man finds a liferaft. Barry Lyndon feels erroneous, though many have appealed to it. This testament is much more indebted to Troell's two-part epic of The Emigrants and New Land, markedly so when the Shakers set sail to America, escaping persecution back home. Not to be hyperbolic, but I wouldn't be surprised if some Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev most of all, were a reference for Fastvold and company, as well as Jancsó's 70s follies. Kathryn Hunter's presence in a minor supporting role should also whet the appetite of those in the theatrical know.

It's quite tempting to establish a dialogue between the Shakers' exultations and the physical theater that this actress spent a career developing, deepening, disseminating. Going further still, well beyond the border of the mainstream and dreams of musicals, The Testament of Ann Lee could well enjoy a fruitful analysis alongside Artaud's theories on the Theater of Cruelty. Again, through her religious subject, Fastvold considers or inspires consideration of performance-based arts, open to the possibility of theology and theater and its progeny of disciplines juxtaposed. But my apologies, for I'm getting farther and farther away from the film, following theoretical threads down thought avenues better left for later essays rather than this review. 

The point is that The Testament of Ann Lee is one of the year's most ambitious films, a mesmeric miasma of ideas that don't all come together but gain value in the bedlam of their misalignment. I know I was expecting something much tamer when I entered the TIFF Lightbox. Informed by The Brutalist which shares much of the same team, including Brady Corbet as co-writer, I anticipated a neater work of musical biopic, easier to categorize and fit into a box. However, no one will enclose this riot of polysemic cinema into such limited cells. With that in mind, it's no wonder it still lacks a distributor, despite being essential viewing. And how's this for a hot take? Give me The Testament of Ann Lee's chaotic self over The Brutalist any day of the week! 

Whatever the case, as we're reaching the part of this text where a conclusion wouldn't go amiss, I find myself lost. How does one compose a coda to this kind of cacophony? One that was laced through with Seyfried's angelic voice and Lewis Pullman's endearing reed, hymns and originals, pious hums and rocking roars, and 70mm wheels stuttering to digital? It's beyond my ability, quite frankly. So, instead, I'll leave you with the last lines I scribbled in my notebook during the screening, stray thoughts suggested by the imperfect prodigies on screen: "A place for everything and everything in its place. We are all reaching for salvation, together yet fundamentally alone. Give our grief to God and to the screen in song."

After competing in Venice, The Testament of Ann Lee was part of the Special Presentations at TIFF 50. It will next screen at the Beyond Fest in Los Angeles and the BFI London Film Festival.