"Seyfried delivers a career-peak performance in the title role of The Testament of Ann Lee, playing a founder of the religious Shaker movement in an epic quasi-musical from the makers of 2024's The Brutalist. Set in 18th-century northern England and then Revolutionary-era America, it's a thoroughly unconventional biopic that's as visually splendid as it is narratively ingenious. Covering Lee's life over several decades, it begins as she joins a sect in Manchester run by Jane and James Wardley (Stacy Martin and Scott Handy),"
"She marries a local blacksmith (Christopher Abbott), but after four miscarriages and other misfortunes comes to the belief that all fornication is sinful, regardless of marital status. This rather extreme proposition (one that's also logically incompatible with a long-lasting movement) catches on, and Ann leads a group of like-minded celibates to establish a colony in upstate New York, where they adopt a neutral stance during the American rebellion against England."
Amanda Seyfried delivers a career-peak performance as Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker religious movement. The film is an epic quasi-musical that spans 18th-century northern England and Revolutionary-era America, blending visual splendor with narrative invention. The story follows Lee from membership in a Manchester sect through marriage, miscarriages, and a radical conviction that all fornication is sinful, leading her to establish a celibate community in upstate New York. The Shaker movement is presented as an ecstatic, utopian response to mechanization and secularism. Cinematic techniques are used to immerse viewers in the emotional lives of determined believers pursuing rejection of materialism and spiritual connection.
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