THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Tim Blake Nelson, and Christopher Abbott
Director: Mona Fastvold
ADRIANO
There are moments in The Testament of Ann Lee where director/co-writer Mona Fastvold is on fire. In these moments, the choreography, enhanced by Daniel Blumberg's score, is a magnificent sight. It’s the kind of musical magic I can feel in my chest. Unfortunately, those moments can't save the Wikipedia-esque script. Amanda Seyfried plays Ann Lee with amazing humanity, but as the film progressed, I couldn't help but wonder what I was supposed to feel about Lee, the Shaker movement, or Christianity in America. In the end, the production values and Fastvold's filmmaking are the only memorable parts of the film.
QUENTIN
The Testament of Ann Lee is handsomely made, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it finds itself in the Oscar conversation, especially Amanda Seyfried. However, this just isn’t my cup of tea. I’ve never been particularly fond of movie musicals, and Testament revels in all the things I typically don’t like about them. The songs are redundant and repetitive, adding very little value, which makes the movie feel much longer than it actually is. It’s also weirdly over-narrated, adding to the redundancy. Mostly though, I find Lee (Seyfried) and Shakers’ religious doctrine to be certifiably insane, so it was hard to take any of it seriously.
BODE
The Testament of Ann Lee shares the type of ambition that drove husband-wife filmmaking duo Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet’s last wide-spanning epic, The Brutalist, and it places the great Amanda Seyfried in a musical environment again, which she has always excelled in. But while Fastvold mounts these sequences with great skill, Seyfried gives a primal performance, and the music from composer Daniel Blumberg is solid, those elements often feel like the only things breaking up what’s essentially a disappointingly conventional historical drama. I commend the confidence to take a big swing like this, but in my eyes, it comes up a tad short.
This film was reviewed by Adriano and Quentin as part of Bitesize Breakdown's coverage of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2025 Zurich Film Festival, respectively.