Elvis Costello once wrote a song called “All This Useless Beauty”: an apt description of THE BRUTALIST co-writer and producer, Mona Fastvold’s new film, THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. It’s not that it’s badly put together. Indeed, the cinematography, costume and production design are rather handsome. (Not that you can appreciate the cinematography on the Curzon Mayfair’s cream-crackered projector.). Fastvold is clearly a deeply skilled film-maker and has a sure and unique visual style and the courage to do something really audacious in putting music and movement at the heart of the film. Daniel Blumberg’s score takes inspiration from actual Shaker folk music and the choreography of the cult sect shaking and beating their chests to the music is genuinely mesmerising. In the words of my husband, if this film had been a thirty-minute piece of experimenta mashing up the dance numbers it would have been a banger.
But no. What we have here is the Wikipedia entry for Ann Lee rendered as a film. Born in 18th century Manchester in a Quaker community she joins a sect known for its “shaking”. She loses four children in infancy, is persecuted for her faith, and develops the belief that she is literally the second coming of Christ. She takes her followers to New York and eventually founds a religious community in the middle of Bumblefuck. She continues to be prosecuted for refusing to take sides in the American War of Independence, then dies.
Fastvold and Brady Corbet’s script has no interest in interrogating any of Ann Lee’s religious claims and shows no interest in the interiority of any of the characters. The utter sincerity of the film shocked me. It read like a propaganda piece for a cult. Every now and then there would be flickers of potential interest: ooh, is the husband a sado-masochist?! Is the brother gay?! Is Ann a eunuch?! But no. Nothing so prurient or interesting. Ann is just taken as what she is: a pioneering female religious leader with a decent following of her fellow nutters. Indeed she really is a saint according to this film. Observe the one liner where she shames slave traders, or the other one liner where her people have the condescension to learn woodworking from the First Nations. She must be a good person, right?
I just feel really sad that some really talented film-makers got together and harnessed all of their earnest intentions to create such an utterly uncurious and irrelevant film. What a waste.
ANN LEE has a running time of 137 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and London. It does not yet have a commercial release date.
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