This musical drama, directed by Mona Fastvold, who co-wrote it with Brady Corbet stars Amanda Seyfried as Ann Lee, the founding leader of the Shakers religious sect in the 18th century.
I struggled with this extremely odd movie. The initial section set in Manchester was admirable for its depiction of the lives of working class people at the time, but the initial promise that subject would be addressed is not fulfilled. Instead, the concentration is entirely on Ann’s religious fulfilment and I was not sure why I was meant to care. She is arrested for her rejection of the Church of England and imprisoned. During her incarceration she has visions, or more likely hallucinations due to malnourishment, and concludes that she is the second coming. She believes America offers her the chance for freedom of religion, so a small group of her followers travel her there but they find just as much intolerance.
So, at best, Ann suffered some sort of mental breakdown and at worst, she was an attention seeking con woman. But she is presented as a heroine, with no one questioning her belief that no one should have sex and how the human race could carry on if the general population followed that doctrine.
Most of the criticism of this film has been by people who struggled with the musical and dance interludes incorporating the shaking that gave the religion its name. That was not my biggest issue, and the initial couple of instances were impressive in their strangeness. But they became repetitive and were too well choreographed, giving the impression that I was watching a naff west end show.
Maybe it is my aversion to religion of all kinds, but especially the more evangelical, that caused me to struggle, but the longer it went on, and boy did it go on, the worse I thought it became. There is one utterly preposterous sequence where one of Ann’s followers, looking for a location to build their settlement starts waving his finger in the air and running through the woods until he finds the spot and promptly collapses. It was like something that Monty Python would have done.
Aside from the early promise, the only worthwhile features are a couple of the performances, Seyfried and the always great Thomasin McKenzie as one her most ardent followers. Fastvold and Corbet managed to turn an unpromising subject matter into gold in The Brutalist but do not repeat the trick here.
Rating: 3.5 out of 10