When our daughterJocelyn worked for TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival, she was able to see a lot of movies and scored a few tickets for family as well. That was a great job perk.
We haven't attended any TIFF films for years but I still pay attention to the pictures with buzz, including one from this year about an intriguing religious figure, Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker movement of the 18th century in the United States.
I wrote once about the last two remaining Shakers, an aging man and woman who are the vestige of a movement that at it's height had thousands of committed followers who lived in utopian communities that some would say were cult-like. Members were required to be celibate so without that form of shaking it's a challenge to create more Shakers and the movement eventually waned. Recently a middle-aged woman joined the Shaker community but even with that 50% increase in membership there isn't a lot of hope for the future.
Mother Lee was supposed Christ reincarnated as a woman and the group ended up with moniker "Shakers" because of their ecstatic dancing. They were eventually called the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing and while they seemed to be "pie in the sky" they also had a remarkable commitment to making everything they used in daily life with precision and beauty. They were also clever mechanical innovators.
The film is The Testament of Ann Lee and stars Amanda Seyfried as the title character. It sounds weird and wonderful for reasons I won't describe here, but the Shakers were certainly unusual, mystifying, to say the least. Would I go to see it? I think so, even though it's over two hours in length. I do have a fascination with the varieties and vagaries of religious expression.
Here are a couple of review excerpts to give a flavour of the positive response to what has been a polarizing film.
David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a grade of A−, calling it "a speculative, feverish, and altogether rapturous biopic"Guy Lodge of Variety wrote, "As a study of unyielding faith practiced on wholly singular terms, it's raptly respectful and intellectually curious, even if dramatically, it can pall across the course of a languid 136-minute runtime. But it's as a full-blown song-and-dance affair — about the least likely, biggest-swinging shape Lee's story could taken — that the film is most stunningly persuasive.
2 comments:
I visited a Shaker village, Canterbury, New Hampshire, about 30 years ago... one remaining resident, in her late 80's... Sister Bertha. It was a very interesting tour and experience.
That would be an interesting experience and one I'll never entertain given the current political climate south of the border! Thanks Judy.
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