The 215 -minute “The Brutalist”, now awarded three Oscars for camera, film music and leading actor Adrien Brody, should initially cost $ 28 million. A designed bargain for a history epic rotated on 70mm analog material from such huge dimensions. With Martin Scorsese as a director, a similar project would certainly have landed quickly beyond the 200 million mark.
But then the financing-among other things because of the Covid pandemic-collapsed shortly before shooting. After a new attempt, the film was therefore made just under ten million dollars. This is nothing less than absolute madness and must have meant a long -term effort for years for the director Brady Corbet and his wife Mona Fastvold, which is involved in the script.
Because it was so nice, again
So first take a deep breath? Pust cake! Exactly one year after “The Brutalist”, the couple's next project, this time with Mona Fastvold (“The Sleepwalker”) as a director and with Brady Corbet as co-author, celebrates his world premiere: again an epic, historical, continent excessive history; Filmed again on analog 70mm; Turned again for less than ten million dollars on ridiculously a few days (34). “The Testament of Ann Lee”, a biopic about the title-giving founder of the Shaker movement, is only 130 instead of 215 minutes …
… but there are ecstatic musical numbers and spectacular sequences on a sailing ship on a stormy seas. No wonder that the leading actress Amanda Seyfried was warned by her director right at the beginning that she was facing a “very uncomfortable experience”. But as with “The Brutalist” you can feel the whole sacrificing madness in the best sense of “The Testament of Ann Lee”, which must have flowed into his creation – even if the result is even more bulky this time.
“Mamma Mia!”-Star Amanda Seyfried has musical experience-but something like “The Testament of Ann Lee” is also a completely new experience for you!
In the research for her previous film, the feminist historical drama “The World to Come”, Mona Fastvold came across a Shaker hymn. The songs of the Christian-utopian Shaker community are deliberately kept simple so that everyone can take part in the community. At the same time, however, the melodies are perfect to get into a religious ecstasy with constant repetition, supported by dance movements that are often reminiscent of twitching (therefore “Shaker”). This sometimes seems almost orgiastic, which is ironic, because the Shaker are otherwise a strictly celibate community.
The Shaker were founded in 1736 in Manchester. After their four children all died before their first birthday, Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried) come with a prison sentence for disturbance of disturbance (as part of a service of the “Shaking Quäker”). She strives for a community in which the lust of meat no longer plays a role, men and women are equal, everyone gets closer to God due to hard work for perfection. However, there seems to be no space in Great Britain. So Ann Lee, together with a dozen supporters, competes with the strict trip to New York …
Especially a physical experience
Even if the interpretation suggests that Ann Lee also insisted on celibacy because her blacksmith-husband (Christopher Abbott) stood on SM-SEX and after four painful childhood no further pregnancy, Mona Fastvold does without any disk psychologization. Instead, she tells the founding myth of slavery and violent Shaker sect (at the wedding: 6,000 members, of which only two were left in 2025) relatively straightforward and in a very admiring gesture.
But as I said, everything started with a Shaker hymn-and so in “The Testament of Ann Lee” there is never the historical narrative, but always the visceral experience of praise in the center (which is why the film should also be perceived as somewhat bulky to literally): in candlelight-soaked 70mm recordings, most of which can be obtained directly in the next museum we the shaker dancing, twitching, groaning and screeching.
Only in the Shaker belief does Ann Lee finally find something like inner peace.
This excessive ecstasy (your cinema operators absolutely ask to turn on the sound accordingly) also jump to the audience. It feels as intensely as if you are sitting right in front of a group of Māori who perform their haka just a few centimeters away. Or like a bath in the curve of the Icelandic national football team, where the fans tuned their Viking Thunder Clap. So far, at least purely physically, the religious fulfillment in the cinema has so far been rare.
Amanda Seyfried has already gained a few musical experiences as a star of, among other things, two “Mamma Mia!” Blockbusters. But that has nothing to do with what she delivers here. It is a soreness without a sacrifice that can do without double soil. Because not only in the services, but also with the repeated violence-from tearing out blood-over-flowed dead babies from their abdomen to a particularly brutal attack on the first Shaker colony of Niskayuna-“The Testament of Ann Lee” increases again and again to a visceral crescendo of suffering and redemption, which spits on one two hours.
Conclusion: Even if “The Testament of Ann Lee” is still a corner as “the brutalist”, the cooperating spouses Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet are increasingly establishing themselves than that of Christopher Nolan most radical analog filmmakers of our time.
We saw “The Testament of Ann Lee” at Venice Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated his world premiere with an analog 70mm copy as part of the official competition.