The Testament of Ann Lee | TIFF50

If you're not familiar with the Shakers, like I wasn't – this will be an ecstatic introduction.

This is the story of the founding of a religion by one woman deeply scarred by patriarchy, told with deep respect and full earnestness to the faith it depicts. Shakers worship through song and dance, and through choreography, the most dizzyingly lush score, the most beautiful performances from absolutely everyone, and the 70mm film it was shot on, Mona Fastvold weaves one of the most complex, beautiful and heartfelt films of the season by representing the Shakers just as they are - through song and dance.

By virtue of the subject matter, and it's director, this is going to be considered within the canon of feminist arthouse, alongside "Portrait of a Girl on Fire", "Promising Young Woman" and "Lady Bird" etc etc and all that their directors are known to be known for - but it is very very far from this. Unironically, I would say it rhymes more deeply with "The Brutalist" - a film co-written by Fastvold, and likely so because this film was also co-written with Brady Corbet, Fastvold's Partner.

I actually can't explain to you the depth - the "musical" aspect of it is incidental, nay, natural - it is merely the accurate depiction of the Shaker faith. I just told you all of the pieces of the film, down to the fact that it's shot on 70mm, and yet I will never be able to explain it better than you will feel it by watching it.

I should say - I didn't know it was a musical, or rather, perhaps I'd forgotten. I'd heard good things and just got a ticket on a whim. Despite the start of the film being period-accurate song and dance, I didn't actually deep that this film was a "musical" until long after Act 2 was well underway.

Amanda Seyfried is absolutely transformative in this role. The care of the visual language and complexity of the choreography absolutely floored me. This is a big film walking around like a small film - a blockbuster with arthouse clothes on.

It's for all these reasons that I think this film should be in strong contention for Beat Picture. It would say something about how we value stories of Egalitarianism, cinema by women, with deep compassion for women, with a heightened artistic value because of that compassion, with a heightened sense of risk taking, a lack of fear of "musicals" or "choreography", or other feminine-aligned modes of artistic expression. This film is that good, but also, the statement it would make would echo beyond.