Revelation, devotion, delusion, and madness all look alike in The Testament of Ann Lee, such that differentiating between them requires only a slight shift in perspective.

The story of Ann Lee, founder of the Shaker religious sect, Mona Fastvold’s film—screening at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival following its celebrated premiere at the Venice Film Festival—is possessed with the fanatical spirit of its protagonist. Like Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End, it’s a daring and thrilling reinvention of the movie musical, tapping into a tumultuous, eroticized zealotry that makes it both euphoric sermon and folk-horror hallucination.

A collision of agony and ecstasy that approaches the divine even as it reveals piousness to be an outgrowth of, and justification for, earthly sufferin

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