who did amanda seyfried piss off?

the testament of ann lee (2025) should've done numbers

On Friday afternoon, in more water is wet news, I went to the cinema. Contrary to popular belief I do not actually write about every film I watch. Like, last week I watched Eternity (2025), that film starring Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Turner, and Callum Turner, and all I can tell you about that was that it felt like experiencing a glorified original Hallmark movie. With which, to be clear, there is nothing wrong. I love losing an entire afternoon on the couch to three vaguely undistinguishable Hallmark romcoms starring unthreateningly pretty people. But Olsen deserves better, especially following her performance in the criminally underwatched and underrecognized His Three Daughters (2023).

Which brings me to another, more recent work that for inexplicable reasons received very little buzz this awards season: The Testament of Ann Lee (2025). Starring a captivating Amanda Seyfried, the film tells the story of the founding leader of the Shaker Movement, the Quaker spin-off that began in Manchester circa 1747 before taking its talents to America a few decades later.

(This isn’t about the film, but every few weeks I watch this video of the actress playing the dulcimer and singing Joni Mitchell’s “California.” You can sense Jimmy Fallon almost disassociating, as if being in the presence of true talent at this stage in his career makes him uncomfortable. All room for empty obsequiousness snuffed out.)

The Testament of Ann Lee is two hours and sixteen minutes of breathtaking insanity, a biopic that is not a biopic, a musical in text but not spirit, accent work that I just know made the hot dialect coach on YouTube proud, lighting that did not make me squint at the screen despite being partly set in a literal mill in 18th century England … I do not understand how it did not garner more recognition. It’s been days and I’m still thinking about it.