The Testament of Ann Lee, 2025.

Directed by Mona Fastvold.
Starring Amanda Seyfried, Lewis Pullman, Thomasin McKenzie, Matthew Beard, Christopher Abbott, David Cale, Stacy Martin, Scott Handy, Jeremy Wheeler, Tim Blake Nelson, Daniel Blumberg, Jamie Bogyo, Viola Prettejohn, Natalie Shinnick, Shannon Woodward, Millie-Rose Crossley, Willem van der Vegt, Esmee Hewett, Harry Conway, Benjamin Bagota, Maria Sand, Scott Alexander Young, Matti Boustedt, George Taylor, Alexis Latham, Lark White, Viktória Dányi, and Roy McCrerey.

SYNOPSIS:

Ann Lee, the founding leader of the Shaker Movement, proclaimed as the female Christ by her followers. Depicts her establishment of a utopian society and the Shakers’ worship through song and dance, based on real events.

The second coming of Christ was a woman. Narrated as a story of legend and constructed as a cinematic epic, co-writer/director Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee tells the story of the eponymous 18th-century preacher who occasionally experienced divine visions guiding her on how to teach her and her followers to free themselves and be absolved of sin.

This group, an offshoot of Quakers known as Shakers, did so by stimulating and intoxicating full-body rhythmic dancing movements set to many hymns beautifully sung by Amanda Seyfried and others. The key distinction between the group, and arguably the toughest selling point of the film aside from the religious nature of it all, is that Ann Lee asserted that the only way to achieve such pure holiness is by giving up all sexual relations, living a life of celibacy (as evident by some laughter during the CIFF festival screening when she made this decree, which quickly subsided as it is relatively easy to buy into her mission and convictions).

It shouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise that Mona Fastvold had trouble getting this one off the ground. Perhaps what finally secured the project’s financial backing was all those awards The Brutalist (directed by her husband Brady Corbet and co-written by her, flipping those duties and credits this time around) either won or was nominated for, which was notably another film that almost no one had interest in making. The point is that this should serve as a reminder that there is an audience for anything and everything.

Whether one doesn’t care about religious movements or is a nonbeliever, The Testament of Ann Lee is remarkably hypnotic in its craftsmanship. It features a flat-out career-best performance from Amanda Seyfried, who blends all of her strengths as an actor and unleashes them at the peak of her talent. Yes, there are moments of tragedy and trauma, but the film refuses to wallow in misery, chartering her Shakers movement with hope, miracles, and perseverance as the journey takes them from Manchester to Niskayuna, New York, in search of expanding their follower base while dealing with other setbacks within the movement and personally.

Chronicling Ann Lee’s life with precise editing that rarely drags (and mostly fixates on the early stages of the Shakers movement and decade-plus long attempt to battle sexism as a female preacher and find a foothold amidst escalating tensions between British and Americans), the film also offers insight into the events that gave her a repulsion for sexual intimacy, her marriage with blacksmith Abraham (Christopher Abbott), and dynamics with her most loyal supporters which includes brother William (Lewis Pullman) and Mary (Thomasin Mckenzie, also serving as the narrator). Given the unfortunate nature of how most women, especially wives, were expected to have zero agency compared to their male counterparts and deliver babies, it is also organically inspiring watching her find a group with similar beliefs willing to trust her visions and take up celibacy. Whether or not all of them succeed is part of the journey and, interestingly enough, shows who is genuinely loyal and in her corner.

This is no dry biopic, though. Instead, it is brimming with life and energy, mainly through those “shaking” sequences depicting those outstandingly choreographed seizure-like dance numbers (typically shot by William Rexer from an elevated overhead angle, looking down at an entire room, capturing a ridiculous amount of motions all weaving together and creating something uniformly spellbinding). The songs throughout are divinely performed, adding another layer to this film’s transfixing pull. Nearly every image is sublime, right up until the perfect final shot. Admittedly, the film loses a bit of steam in the third act as one awaits a grim confrontation with naysayers who feel threatened by her position, movement, and pacifism regarding the burgeoning American Revolution.

Still, whatever reservations one has about watching a religious movement preaching peace and celibacy while laboring away building a utopia (an aspect that puts it in great juxtaposition with The Brutalist) will wash away like sin. That’s the power of the movies; even someone who isn’t religious will find it hard not to be swept up in Ann Lee’s life. Fact, fiction, bluff… it doesn’t matter; the material is treated with conviction and non-judgmental respect. In The Testament of Ann Lee, Amanda Seyfried channels that for something holy, empowering, infectious, and all around breathtaking.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

“Everybody wants to rule the world,” goes the Tears for Fears song we hear at a key point in “Marty Supreme,” Josh Safdie’s nerve-busting adrenaline jolt of a movie starring a never-better Timothée Chalamet.

But here’s the thing: everybody may want to rule the world, but not everybody truly believes they CAN. This, one could argue, is what separates the true strivers from the rest of us.

And Marty — played by Chalamet in a delicious synergy of actor, role and whatever fairy dust makes a performance feel both preordained and magically fresh — is a striver. With every fiber of his restless, wiry body. They should add him to the dictionary definition.

Needless to say, Marty is a New Yorker.

Also needless to say, Chalamet is a New Yorker.

And so is Safdie, a writer-director Chalamet has called “the street poet of New York.” So, where else could this story be set?

It’s 1952, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Marty Mauser is a salesman in his uncle’s shoe store, escaping to the storeroom for a hot tryst with his (married) girlfriend. Suddenly we’re seeing footage of sperm traveling — talk about strivers! — up to an egg. Which morphs, of course, into a pingpong ball.

This witty opening sequence won’t be the only thing recalling “Uncut Gems,” co-directed by Safdie with his brother Benny before the two split for solo projects. That film, which feels much like the precursor to “Marty Supreme,” began as a trip through the shiny innards of a rare opal, only to wind up inside Adam Sandler’s colon, mid-colonoscopy.

Sandler’s Howard Ratner was a New York striver, too, but sadder, and more troubled. Marty is young, determined, brash — with an eye always to the future. He’s a great salesman: “I could sell shoes to an amputee,” he boasts, crassly. But what he’s plotting to unveil to the world has nothing to do with shoes. It’s about table tennis.

How likely is it that this Jewish kid from the Lower East Side can become the very face of a sport in America, soon to be “staring at you from the cover of a Wheaties box?”

To Marty, perfectly likely. Still, he knows nobody in the U.S. cares about table tennis. He’s so determined to prove everyone wrong, starting at the British Open in London, that when there’s a snag obtaining cash for his trip, he brandishes a gun at a colleague to get it.

Shaking off that sorta-armed robbery thing, Marty arrives in London, where he fast-talks his way into a suite at the Ritz. Here, he spies fellow guest Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow, in a wise, stylish return to the screen), a former movie star married to an insufferable tycoon (“Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary, one of many nonactors here.)

Kay’s skeptical, but Marty finds a way to woo her. Really, all he has to say is: “Come watch me.” Once she sees him play, she’s sneaking into his room in a lace corselet.

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This would be a good time to stop and consider Chalamet’s subtly transformed appearance. He is stick-thin — duh, he never stops moving. His mustache is skimpy. His skin is acne-scarred — just enough to erase any movie-star sheen. Most strikingly, his eyes, behind the round spectacles, are beady — and smaller. Definitely not those movie-star eyes.

But then, nearly all the faces in “Marty Supreme” are extraordinary. In a movie with more than 100 characters, we have known actors (Fran Drescher, Abel Ferrara); nonacting personalities (O’Leary, and an excellent Tyler Okonma (Tyler, The Creator) as Marty’s friend Wally); and exciting newcomers like Odessa A’Zion as Marty’s feisty girlfriend Rachel.

There are also a slew of nonactors in small parts, plus cameos from the likes of David Mamet and even high wire artist Philippe Petit. The dizzying array makes one curious how it all came together — is casting director Jennifer Venditti taking interns? Production notes tell us that for one hustling scene at a bowling alley, young men were recruited from a sports trading-card convention.

Elsewhere on the creative team, composer Daniel Lopatin succeeds in channelling both Marty’s beating heart and the ricochet of pingpong balls in his propulsive score. The script by Safdie and cowriter Ronald Bronstein, loosely based on real-life table tennis hustler Marty Reisman, beats with its own, never-stopping pulse. The same breakneck aesthetic applies to camera work by Darius Khondji.

Back now to London, where Marty makes the finals against Japanese player Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi, like his character a deaf table tennis champion). “I’ll be dropping a third atom bomb on them,” he brags — not his only questionable World War II quip. But Endo, with his unorthodox paddle and grip, prevails.

After a stint as a side act with the Harlem Globetrotters, including pingpong games with a seal — you’ll have to take our word for this, folks, we’re running low on space — Marty returns home, determined to make the imminent world championships in Tokyo.

But he’s in trouble — remember he took cash at gunpoint? Worse, he has no money.

So Marty’s on the run. And he’ll do anything, however messy or dangerous, to get to Japan. Even if he has to totally debase himself (mark our words), or endanger friends — or abandon loyal and brave Rachel.

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Is there something else for Marty, besides his obsessive goal? If so, he doesn’t know it yet. But the lyrics of another song used in the film are instructive here: “Everybody’s got to learn sometime.”

So can a single-minded striver ultimately learn something new about his own life?

We’ll have to see. As Marty might say: “Come watch me.”

“Marty Supreme,” an A24 release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association “for language throughout, sexual content, some violent content/bloody images and nudity.” Running time: 149 minutes. Four stars out of four.