As I write, the strains of a key song – or maybe key psalm – from Mona Fastvold’s extraordinary third feature blasts across the red carpet where Amanda Seyfried is sopping up attention for the first film at this year’s Venice International Film Festival to (appropriately, as we shall see) generate evangelical fervour.
That is not to say everyone loves this musical study of a religious pioneer in prerevolutionary America, but nobody is likely to be indifferent to it. It is too odd for that.
Odd but not entirely unfamiliar. Fastvold wrote The Brutalist with that film’s director, Brady Corbet (who is also her romantic partner), and the new film, shot on rich 70mm stock, again has a new arrival lurching fanatically through an often unwelcoming New World.
Before that we are in Manchester, where Ann Lee, an illiterate cotton-mill worker, is making waves in a sect of the Quaker religion. Lee was a real-life founding leader of the Shaker movement and, as the film tells it, thought herself in direct communication with God. (The film doesn’t address the inherent problem of continuing a sect that prohibits sexual intercourse, but we must assume Lee had a plan.)
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Like so many persecuted believers, Lee and her flock eventually set sail for America, where, after apparently saving their ship from a storm, they establish a community in colonial New York. Some locals are won over to the frantic religious fits that gave the Shakers their name. Others, appalled at the notion of a woman in the pulpit, take to violent opposition.
The first half is the stuff of masterpieces. Composing her images in murky, oily imitation of Rembrandt, the director creates a convincing version of Lancashire torn between industrial modernity and apocalyptic mysticism. All this played out through sinuous songs by Daniel Blumberg – who won an Oscar for The Brutalist – derived from Shaker hymns.
Seyfried is electrifying in the musical sequences. Sometimes, working through Celia Rowlson-Hall’s bold, disciplined choreography, she is brash and defiant. Elsewhere, notably in a number that seems to be called “I Hunger and Thirst”, she struggles to overcome despair.
Fastvold’s screenplay, again written with Corbet, doesn’t much go in for theological musings. There is no effort to make the beliefs and manner of their expression seem anything other than peculiar. But the film is plainly in sympathy with Lee’s determination and bravery. It also has interesting things to say about how such sects had a vested interest in the Patriots, pledged to religious freedom, beating the British in the imminent revolution.
The extravagance of Fastvold’s techniques can sometimes get in the way of the characters. Strong supporting actors such as Lewis Pullman, Thomasin McKenzie and Christopher Abbott don’t quite succeed in making personalities heard over Blumberg’s bewitching arrangements. But, as cinema of melodic effect, The Testament of Ann Lee could hardly be bettered.
It premieres at Venice without a distributor. That may have been rectified by the time you read this, but will the film make it into commercial cinemas before the end of the year? Have faith.
