The Testament of Ann Lee (2025)

Fastvold creates a bold and intoxicating meta-musical that chronicles Ann Lee’s life and expands the possibilities of filmed biography through its visceral, ecstatic exploration of Shaker worship and historical contradictions.

The critic hails the film as a rapturous, ecstatic quasi-musical that celebrates the birth of the Shaker movement through propulsive hymns and choreography, with Amanda Seyfried delivering a career-best performance as the visionary leader.

The critic finds the film a wild, wonderful musical tribute to Ann Lee and her Shaker movement, with Fastvold delivering ecstatic song-and-dance sequences alongside darker moments of trauma and resistance. Seyfried delivers a ferociously physical, career-topping performance as the visionary leader.

Mona Fastvold’s musical-biopic delivers an almost spiritual experience through Amanda Seyfried’s brilliant, primal performance as Ann Lee and its sensorial, epic style of cinema focused on ecstatic worship and personal trauma.

The critic calls the film one of the strangest and most singular musicals ever made, praising its immersive 18th-century world, hybrid choreography blending traditional and modern dance, emotional Shaker spirituals, and Amanda Seyfried’s intense performance that fills in emotional details despite historical gaps.

Fastvold crafts a one-of-a-kind cinematic experience that immerses viewers in the Shakers' ecstatic worship through music and choreography adapted from real hymns. The film highlights prescient themes of equality and bodily autonomy while showcasing Seyfried's committed triple-threat performance.

Fastvold transforms religious devotion into a physical, unusual musical through movement and song, resulting in a genuinely remarkable movie. Amanda Seyfried’s committed, resonant performance holds the ambitious film together.

Strange, ravishing and rhapsodic historical folk musical that sweeps viewers up in its depiction of ecclesiastical fervor through Busby Berkeley-style dance sequences and Amanda Seyfried’s unwavering, committed performance.

Fastvold’s stylized musical extravaganza about Ann Lee mesmerizes with its fervent worship sequences and dance, though the more prosaic scenes disappoint. The film respects the unknowability of its protagonist while showcasing bold formal invention.

An unusual and daring but uneven musical biopic that explores the Shaker founder’s story through bold stylistic and musical choices, though it lacks sufficient character development and narrative drive to fully succeed.

The film is a vehement, fervent, striking but sometimes baffling drama about the historical figure of Ann Lee and the Shaker movement. It is a genuinely strange, elusive work that deploys irony while asking the audience to sympathise with its subject.

This biopic of the English founder of the Shakers is overwhelmingly self-serious, with unintentionally hilarious results, as the film turns the ecstatic worship into something that recalls Monty Python.

Amanda Seyfried gives a performance of raw abandon as the spiritual leader of the Shaker sect in this heady if deeply self-conscious portrait. The film centres the esoteric with audience-friendly trappings but lands as a careful, tasteful halfway house.

The critic finds the film a dizzying, energetic speculative portrait of Ann Lee and the Shakers that thrums with spiritual intensity and features strong performances and rhapsodic songs, but lacks intimate insight into its protagonist and feels like a repetitive slog at times.

The critic hails Mona Fastvold’s singular, astonishing biographical musical about the Shakers’ founder. Amanda Seyfried delivers an extraordinary performance that sweeps viewers into Ann Lee’s visions, pain, and joy.

The critic calls it one of the best movies of the year and a unique spiritual musical that captures religious ecstasy through song and dance. Seyfried delivers the best performance of 2025 as Ann Lee.

The critic highlights the bold, disorienting musical biopic that captures how ecstatic 18th-century religious experiences felt through mesmerizing Amanda Seyfried and 70mm visuals. It ultimately finds continuity in human experience via a unique, vibrating frequency.

The critic describes a carefully crafted, serene film with exquisite cinematography and period detail that absorbs patient viewers through its reverie-like quality and respectful portrayal of the Shakers.

Fastvold treats the story of Ann Lee with respect and bright humour, painting her as coherent in turning trauma into resolute faith. Seyfried gives a stunning, wistful and sexy performance as the female Christ.

The critic finds the film an uncompromising, zealous historical musical that fuses form and content to portray the rise of a religious leader on her own terms, with haunting musical sequences and a devastating performance by Amanda Seyfried. It notes the work's divisive nature at Venice, with walkouts alongside applause, but expresses personal rapture at its intensity and refusal to entertain conventionally.

The critic highlights Seyfried's human and inspiring performance grounding the parable and the visceral physicality of the Shakers' worship, while noting the film can feel slippery and inconsistent in its rapture.

The critic praises Amanda Seyfried's exceptional, career-defining performance as the complex founder of the Shakers and the film's unique musical approach to depicting ecstatic worship and surreal elements. Some pacing and voiceover choices are noted as minor drawbacks that slightly undercut emotional impact in key scenes.