Do We Need Saints?

"In "The Testament of Ann Lee," a new film directed by Mona Fastvold, Amanda Seyfried plays the founder and leader of the Shaker movement-a woman believed by her followers to be the second coming of Christ. Fastvold uses song and dance to convey the fervor that Mother Ann shares with her acolytes. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how such depictions of religious devotion might land with modern viewers."

"They trace this theme from Martin Scorsese's docuseries "The Saints" to "Lux," a recent album in which Rosalía mines the divine for musical inspiration. These stories, many of them centuries old, might seem out of step with modern concerns. But we're still borrowing their iconography-and anointing saints of our own-today. "The bracing and sort of terrifying thing about them is precisely that they are human beings," Cunningham says."

The Testament of Ann Lee stars Amanda Seyfried as the founder and leader of the Shaker movement, believed by followers to be the second coming of Christ. Mona Fastvold uses song and dance to convey the fervor that Mother Ann shares with her acolytes. Depictions of religious devotion appear across media, from Martin Scorsese's docuseries The Saints to Rosalía's album Lux, where the divine is mined for musical inspiration. Centuries-old stories continue to inform contemporary iconography and inspire the anointing of modern figures. The unsettling power of such figures stems from their humanity and the suggestion that others might emulate their intensity.

Read at The New Yorker