The Shakers they were called. An offshoot sect of the Quakers known for their gender and racial egalitarianism, communal Utopian philosophy, agrarian lifestyle, and adherence to strict sexual abstinence. Also their worship practices involved dramatic swaying and dances, hence the name.
Even as someone who grew up in a Christian community, I had no awareness of the Shakers and the curious history of their great prophet (and to some the second coming of Christ themselves) Ann Lee, who led a small flock from her native Manchester to New York state to establish a colony in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Watching Mona Fastvold’s phenomenal movie on these subjects I couldn’t believe the “Shakers” were even their real name. That turned out to be true, and while I don’t know how much else strictly is (although given the sources in the end credits, it appears that Fastvold and her partner and co-writer Brady Corbet did Robert Eggers levels of research here), this depiction of the movement and its founding figure is so fascinating and exhilarating that the very notions of this sect are deeply engaging on their own terms.
And this from a movie that chooses to present as a musical -a bonkers idea on paper- but one that in practice feels like the only appropriate way to communicate this story. The Shakers are by their nature exuberant and flamboyant, their emotions openly expressed. Why not just go for the ultimate form of that in telling their story?
It’s a story that begins in Manchester where Ann Lee was born in 1736. Played as an adult by Amanda Seyfried, Ann is seen growing up pious in the arms of the church, a childhood trauma causing her to believe in sex as a cardinal sin. She is introduced to a local Quaker community and quickly becomes a convert, intrigued in their belief in the equal male and female aspects of God and their vibrant rituals of shouting and dancing as a means of praise and prayer. After an arrest in which Ann sees a vision seemingly affirming her beliefs about sex and an image of a paradisaical future, she is deemed a central figure for the new religion, shaping it off of her piety and chastity, heralded “Mother Ann” and shortly after determines to take the Shakers to America, where they ultimately nest in New York state and bristle against the settlers while trying to grow their church as the turbulence of the American Revolution arrives.
A movie like this might easily pass judgment on this sect that has, it must be said, a fairly extreme orthodoxy -at least where sex is concerned. The question never seems to arise for instance of how the faith will grow if reproduction is a non-starter. And there is a way of interpreting Ann herself and the influence she very quickly exercises over the Shakers that casts her as a dictator or a charlatan -someone faking access to divinity as a means of attaining a power few women could grasp in that era, like Paul Verhoeven illustrated in Benedetta. But Fastvold surprisingly takes Ann Lee on her own terms. Granted, her story is told in the past tense from the perspective of her chief apostle Mary (Thomasin McKenzie), so the degree of veneration might be attributable to that. But the tone of the film itself suggests Ann is entirely sincere -we see her visions with her, we're of course privy to her earnestness of expression, we feel the heart and passion of her calling and the principles that guide her faith. Where the world around her is hostile towards her subversions of norms and perceived religious heresy, the lens of Fastvold's film -while not exactly extolling her beliefs itself- is extraordinarily fair.
So is Seyfried's performance, easily one of the best of the year, throwing her all into every fibre of this woman through her monumental journey. She plays the nuances of Ann's piousness well, the fear and discomfort in her eyes around anything sexual, including several masochistic episodes with her husband Abraham (Christopher Abbott), with whom she tragically loses four children before her revelation. But the ecstasy is as vivid as the pains, the joy through her body in her first Shaker quake or in her preachings to newcomers, sensitive and intimate to confessions as few faith leaders seem to embody. It is a heavy, emotionally and physically turbulent role -Ann does nothing by half-measures- and Seyfried plays it all with a fervent yet freeing intensity that is palpable in every frame. Of course she can sing and dance tremendously well, and her Mancunian accent is quite commendable too -that could be said also of most of the cast, who are largely non-British.
They colour the fabric of the period setting, which feels entirely tangible even where its aesthetics are more consciously stylized. Several interior scenes, in the household sermons especially, the lighting and composition is distinctly Baroque (though the film is set through the early Neoclassical era), visually appealing, though authentically dim and cramped. This is true of the industrial environment of Manchester overall, starkly contrasted by the space and light and natural atmosphere of the Shakers' eventual American home. Their grand dance hall is much bigger, with intricate iconography of the tree that Ann envisioned and which grows in the settlement. All of it very ornately shot on 35 mm.
Fastvold and Corbet wonderfully adapt the history in a voice and manner that is authentic while imbuing the story with compelling direction and tension. Obviously on both sides of the Atlantic the Shakers are met with violent resistance and alienation, and especially once Ann’s dictates take effect we see the impact on even her followers. Of the small group she leads overseas she loses two to their lusts, and Abraham has an especially hard time adjusting to a life without sex -something the movie at least on some level enjoys the humour of. Though Ann’s brother William (Lewis Pullman) is depicted as much more stalwart with regards to his chastity, implicitly due to his homosexuality, an unfortunate connotation the movie never again grapples with. But as far as this golden rule goes, the film is very honest about its meaning and the strictness with which Ann enforces this policy, empathetic and understanding though she is in other regards.
Once through the growing pains though, Ann's little sexless commune functions pretty well, and this one rule is contrasted against the underpinning feminist philosophies of the Shakers. Whatever you might believe about Mother Ann being the Second Coming or some intangible divine figure, her collective is contented in its ways and practices. There is no patriarchy, very little of the usual Christian judgment, and its focus on labour by all and for all is proto-communist in nature. It is a curious thing to see, a fringe of Christianity both peculiar and compelling; the collision of values ahead of their time with the blindness of faith in a charismatic leader with an unsettling degree of influence. But again, Fastvold lets the figures speak for themselves.
Sing for themselves as well. The music and musical numbers really are a tremendous highlight. Daniel Blumberg, hot off The Brutalist, does some amazing moody work with the score, which appropriate to the title feels Biblical in scale yet embedded somewhat with guttural Pagan influences -especially in the 'shaking' sequences that feel like a strange but harmonious marriage of the two spiritualities. The intensity of the song sequences and the breathtaking ways in which Fastvold merges them into the storytelling with vivid life, such as a pristinely edited montage of the Shakers through the seasons of their trans-Atlantic voyage or Williams's pilgrimage through early continental America for converts, is mesmerizing. Ann's series of unsuccessful pregnancies, the Shakers discovering their new purpose, the perhaps mythic finding of the site for settlement, are all conveyed through evocative music and exquisite filmmaking. And some of the songs stick with you as well as in any great musical, such as "Hunger and Thirst", "I Never Did Believe", "All is Summer", and "Clothed by the Sun".
These give the movie an added emotional tenor, and by the end you feel strongly for the community Ann has built and left behind -and which did prosper, albeit in a relative sense, well into the nineteenth century. The Testament of Ann Lee is a hagiography to be sure, it makes little illusion otherwise, but Fastvold's unique and holistic engagement with her life story and that of her movement is enthralling to take in on the merits of its narrative, aesthetics, original style, and magnificent lead performance. One of the great immersive, beautifully unorthodox movies of recent years.
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