‘The Testament of Ann Lee’ Is A Cold Film About An Intensely Emotional Faith
(REVIEW) Hollywood this year had a major uptick in faith-centered movies. There were major releases like “Sinners,” “Wake Up Dead Man,” “Eternity,” “Black Phone 2,” and smaller films like “Presence,” “Death of a Unicorn” and “The Carpenter’s Son.”
“The Testament of Ann Lee” is a perfect example of why Hollywood is genuinely interested in stories about faith now; it’s also an example of why it’s hard for them to capture the religious experience in a way that resonates with believers.
The film follows the real-life story of Ann Lee ( played by Amanda Seyfried), who in the 18th century was the founding leader of the Shaker Movement and was proclaimed as the female Christ by her followers. When she receives a vision that God is a woman, and she must create a utopian society where everyone lives in peace and no one has sex, she embarks on a perilous journey to America to enact this vision.
The film is extremely well-made. The shots often look as beautiful as paintings. Amanda Seyfried and the whole cast give incredible performances. The choreography and editing that turns the Shakers’ worship services halfway into a musical give a phenomenal sense of the emotional power of that religious experience.
The film is not overly didactic or preachy, allowing the characters to speak their beliefs with little force-fed filmmaker commentary. When the film allows us subjectivity into the characters' religious experiences — such as Ann Lee — there are a lot of cool opportunities for us to learn empathy and understanding.
But the film ultimately feels cold. There are too many things that interfere with sustained emotional engagement. The ever-present voiceover — a problem for faith-based industry films as well — creates unnecessary distance between us and the characters' experiences of the events.
This compounds the already archaic language and heavy accents to further a sense that we’re encountering something alien. Finally, far too many of the scenes are repetitive and go on far too long or don’t add anything new: scene after scene of the shaking, being persecuted, explaining their beliefs, getting converts, etc.
This deepens the already acute sense of spiritual objectification in the film. Secular filmmakers often show difficulty telling stories about religious figures because they can’t relate to their religious experiences. In the film, we are peering into another person’s beliefs and experiences rather than vicariously experiencing the narrative.
The result is that they often either a) treat these characters and their beliefs like zoo animals we are curious about rather than fellow humans we can share an experience with or b) find the “real” motivation for the characters that lie behind the religious experience, such as the strong hints that Ann Lee’s religious experiences are a cover for her past trauma.
Both director Mona Fastvold and lead actress Amanda Seyfried explained to the New York Times that they never grew up with a genuine personal faith. But they have always had a curiosity and appreciation of it. The parts of spirituality that they do latch onto as genuine are unsurprising.
Fastvold describes appreciating Lee’s feminism, while Seyifried appreciates finding spirituality through art. “Feminine spirituality” as the positive vision of faith and “masculine religion” being the bad version is a huge theme in Hollywood this year. And the creative, imaginative overlap between emotional spirituality and the arts is a natural crossover.
So it follows that the admirable parts of Ann Lee’s faith focus on the personal, imaginative spirituality of a woman who claims God is a woman and wants to create a feminist utopia, while the bad guys are oppressive, hierarchical, male-dominated organized religion, who justify violent oppression. Too often in “Ann Lee,” the spiritual feels absorbed by the political and artistic rather than complemented by it.
It is wonderful to be curious about experiences that are not your own. But it is a reminder of why movies from the faith-based industry are necessary.
“Movies are like a machine that generates empathy,” Legendary film critic Roger Ebert said. “It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams, and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.”
Religious believers make up the majority of the human population. Film needs to be a place where those experiences can be shared, not just observed with affectionate curiosity.
Because movies are built for that emotional experience, religious movies that keep their distance are not only less empathetic, they’re also boring — something I can’t imagine the Shakers experienced in their worship that I watched on screen.
“The Testament of Ann Lee” opens in theaters on Christmas Day.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.