It’s in moments, when the voice of God channels itself through characters’ bodies, that The Testament of Ann Lee emerges as a musical. Mona Fastvold’s film about Ann Lee and the founding of the Shaker movement takes seriously the spiritual reality of religious faith and fervour, turning the famous dancelike gesticulations and hymns of the late 18th-century Christian sect into an ecstatic cinema of songs and bodies in motion. It’s the use of cinema, in its purest sense, to elucidate the meaning and experience of religion, and Christianity in particular.
Cinema has a long, long tradition of bringing biblical and religious stories to the screen. In 1898, George Méliès wielded trick film techniques for his minute-long short, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, an early example of cinematic form put to…
