THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE aka ANN LEE* - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Official Competition

Elvis Costello once wrote a song called “All This Useless Beauty”: an apt description of THE BRUTALIST co-writer and producer, Mona Fastvold’s new film, THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE.  It’s not that it’s badly put together. Indeed, the cinematography, costume and production design are rather handsome.  (Not that you can appreciate the cinematography on the Curzon Mayfair’s cream-crackered projector.). Fastvold is clearly a deeply skilled film-maker and has a sure and unique visual style and the courage to do something really audacious in putting music and movement at the heart of the film. Daniel Blumberg’s score takes inspiration from actual Shaker folk music and the choreography of the cult sect shaking and beating their chests to the music is genuinely mesmerising. In the words of my husband, if this film had been a thirty-minute piece of experimenta mashing up the dance numbers it would have been a banger.

But no. What we have here is the Wikipedia entry for Ann Lee rendered as a film. Born in 18th century Manchester in a Quaker community she joins a sect known for its “shaking”.  She loses four children in infancy, is persecuted for her faith, and develops the belief that she is literally the second coming of Christ.  She takes her followers to New York and eventually founds a religious community in the middle of Bumblefuck.  She continues to be prosecuted for refusing to take sides in the American War of Independence, then dies.

Fastvold and Brady Corbet’s script has no interest in interrogating any of Ann Lee’s religious claims and shows no interest in the interiority of any of the characters.  The utter sincerity of the film shocked me. It read like a propaganda piece for a cult.  Every now and then there would be flickers of potential interest: ooh, is the husband a sado-masochist?! Is the brother gay?! Is Ann a eunuch?! But no.  Nothing so prurient or interesting.  Ann is just taken as what she is: a pioneering female religious leader with a decent following of her fellow nutters.  Indeed she really is a saint according to this film.  Observe the one liner where she shames slave traders, or the other one liner where her people have the condescension to learn woodworking from the First Nations. She must be a good person, right?

I just feel really sad that some really talented film-makers got together and harnessed all of their earnest intentions to create such an utterly uncurious and irrelevant film. What a waste.

ANN LEE has a running time of 137 minutes.  It played Venice, Toronto and London. It does not yet have a commercial release date.

Spoiler-filled thoughts on THE BRUTALIST*****

THE BRUTALIST is a masterpiece. It is a challenging, deeply felt, meticulously constructed, and largely superbly acted film that is thought-provoking in the best sense. After watching it I was filled with questions and emotions - I was buzzing - and the film resonated in the days following the screening. I could only be thankful that I had another screening lined up. This is a film that I needed to sit with, ruminate over, and rewatch.

Writer-director Brady Corbet (VOX LUX) and his co-writer Mona Fastvold have crafted a script that truly speaks to our times.  Issues raised include the brutal exercise of power by oligarchs - the othering and condescension toward immigrants - the violent insecurity of the intellectually inferior - the need for sanctuary in an anti-semitic world - the need for emotional and sexual connection in an atomised and traumatised world.  And then there is the perennial struggle of the artist versus the capitalist patrons and corporates who fund their work.

All of this intellectual complexity is brought to bear in the fictional figure of Laszlo Toth. He was a Brutalist architect in Hungary before World War Two, but expelled from his profession by the Nazis for his unGermanic work.  He was then separated from his equally talented, intellectually voracious wife Erzsebet, and both sent to concentration camps which they miraculously survive.  As the movie opens, Laszlo is in the belly of a ship about to land on Ellis Island. His wife and niece Zsofia remain in a bureaucratic hellscape, trapped in Europe.

The prologue of the film immediately upends our expectations with the upturned Statue of Liberty.  Laszlo (the magnificent Adrien Brody) is rendered impotent by his wartime experiences, and finds solace for his loneliness, trauma, poverty, alienation and physical pain in the heroin he was given for his broken face on board the ship.  He is welcomed by his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) who runs a furniture store in Philadelphia - then at the height of its industrial pomp. Attila offers one method for survival - complete assimilation and abnegation.  Atilla has married a gentile - nothing wrong with that - so did Laszlo - but Laszlo's wife converted.  Atilla has gentilised the name of his business and toadies to his rich customers.  The welcome that seems warm soon becomes one of rejection.  Atilla has no truck with Laszlo for losing him business and his blonde shrill wife accuses him of sexual assault - a classic anti-semitic trope to pull.

We then move into the meat of the first part of the film - the relationship between Laszlo and his patron - Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr - again magnificently rendered by Guy Pierce as a Kane-like figure.  He is vulgar and loud and ridiculously wealthy. But he is also intellectually insecure - a working class kid raised by a single mother who never went to university but surrounds himself with rare first editions.  He may be superior to Laszlo in every single materialistic way - but he can never be as cultured, nor have Laszlo's taste, nor destroy Laszlo's independence of mind. And for a man who covets and owns, and wants Laszlo as a vanity-pleasing prop, this drives Van Buren mad. I loved the purity of this first half.  The battle between the two men.  The beautiful breaking of ground and coming-to-reality of Laszlo's gigantic community centre and chapel. 

In the second half of the film, the narrative framing device of letters from Laszlo's wife becomes real, as both Erzsebet and Zsofia arrive in Pennsylvania after many years' separation. Here we see further physical and mental damage caused by the Holocaust.  Erzesebet (Felicity JoneS( is in a wheelchair because years of starvation have damaged her bones. Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy) is so traumatised that she cannot speak. The arrival of Erzsebet if further proof to Harry of his intellectual inferiority.  She is an incredibly smart, perceptive, strong woman, who studied at Oxford and returned to Hungary as a journalist. It is no coincidence that Harry tries to find her work as a journalist not in Philadelphia but in New York. She is a threat to his jealously obsessive relationship with Laszlo.  

There is an inevitable argument over money and the project is paused. But Harry inevitably begs Laszlo to come back and the project recommences. We then move to Carrara, Italy for a bravura set-piece segment that seems infused with mystery, a dreamlike unreality, and emotional tension.  Laszlo is reunited with a marble cutter who might look like a dreamy artist but fought the fascists - exhibiting more manhood and courage and moral acuity than someone like Harry can conceive of.  We are now, for the first time in the film, completely in Laszlo's world and Harry has, metaphorically, the wrong shoes for the journey. Is it any surprise that it is here that Harry sexually violates Laszlo in an attempt to reassert the power dynamic, in a scene foreshadowed by his nephew violating Zsofia?

And how fitting it is that real loving sex will resolve this narrative. Laszlo has been impotent for much of the film, despite the inducements of sex workers and porn, and then the entreaties of his wife. They finally achieve climax under the influence of heroin, which he has administered to her for her pain in desperation.  It's an incredibly moving, intimate scene, and has a fever-dream aspect which we will only see the ramifications of when Erzsebet confronts Harry with his crime against Laszlo. For a man so wrapped in his self-perception and vanity, he cannot recover. And this is the end of the "American Dream" for Erzsebet too. She too will follow Zsofia and make aaliyah to Israel. 

We then move to the epilogue of the film where we learn that Laszlo is being feted at the Venice Biennale in 1980.  His commission was indeed finished and now its meaning is explained.  Laszlo was not just being stubborn about its proportions as any artist might.  He was stubborn because he designed it while still separated from his beloved wife, to represent their separation and internment in two different concentration camps.  And so we discover the true meaning of a Cross created by absence - the gap between two concrete cut out pillars - that cannot meet, but the buildings are united by the subterranean level of the complex. 

There is so much to love in this film - the audacity of its length, its thematic scope, its incredible performances....  On that last topic the only slightly false note for me was Felicity Jones somewhat inconsistent Hungarian accent as Erzsebet. I even wondered if they inserted the line about Erzsebet studying at Oxford to explain the occasional middle-class English lilt breaking through. Counter-balancing this we have the breakthrough performance of a lifetime by Joe Alwyn as Harry Jr and the deeply moving potrayal of Zsofia by Raffey Cassidy. 

Behind the lens, the production is flawless.  Cinematographer Lol Crawley (WHITE NOISE) films in close focus Vistavision, a technique contemporaneous to the story and worth seeking out in 70mm prints.  This gives the film a kind of visceral feel of intensity, with saturated colour.  I also cannot speak highly enough of Daniel Blumberg's stunning score, that goes from orchestral classical to jazz to electronica.  

Overall, I feel that what Brady Corbet has done in this film is of equal importance to what Paul Thomas Anderson did with THERE WILL BE BLOOD. It's a movie that does something that you have not seen before, that moves you, provokes you, envelopes you in a unique vision, aurally, visually. It's so far above the run of the mill film that if feels as though it's from another universe. 

THE BRUTALIST is rated R and has a running time of 215 minutes. It opened in the USA on December 20th 2024 and opens in the UK on January 24th 2025.

George Ghon on MELANCHOLIA

Andreas Gursky's Rhein II

Doom and gloom are high on the agenda nowadays. Lars van Trier’s poetic Melancholia is one of the more beautiful jigsaw pieces that deal with the sombre mood in an arresting way, creatively speaking. A big blue planet named Melancholia approaches earth on a trajectory, which will eventually lead to a fatal crash, terminally extinguishing humanity. Given that background, we follow the wedding party of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) at a remote, neo Gothic estate, owned by the rich husband (Kiefer Sutherland) of Justine’s sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The newly wed couple (with Alexander Skarsgård as Michael) arrives in a pristine mood, trying to wiggle their oversized limousine up a narrow mountain road, delaying their arrival, but keeping their state of general excitement and mutual enjoyment. Only when faced with the party guests, her parents (a confused John Hurt and a cold Charlotte Rampling), and her unscrupulous boss (Stellan Skarsgård), Justine’s fragile emotional composure comes to light and we witness the mental pains of a pretty girl, which seems to have, by all conventional standards, a pretty good life. 

If we remember the Justine of de Sade’s eponymous novel as a victim of society in pre-revolutionary France, whose virtuous intentions get callously exploited by powerful figures (representations of church/law/aristocracy), Lars van Trier’s character is a bit more subtle, her suffering largely self-inflicted, or so it seems. There is no apparent traumatizing event that links to her mental condition. The Melancholia from which she suffers comes out of the blue, like the menacing planet that is spiralling towards earth on its fatal course. On a superficial level it could be afflicted by it, but speaking in more symbolic terms, the planetary crash could act as metaphor for the threat that Melancholia, the illness, is to contemporary society. In this context, Slavoj Zizek’s book ‘Living in the End Times’, which was originally published in 2010, gains new relevance. In a chapter on depression he asks the crucial question: ‘If the twentieth century was the Freudian century, so that even its worst nightmares were read as (sado-masochistic) vicissitudes of the libido, will the twenty-first be the century of the post-traumatic disengaged subject (…)?’ The libido recedes in that transformation, leaving Thanatos to overpower Eros. 

Or the libido takes its funny turns, to say the least. Instead of procreating with her understanding husband, Justine opts for the quicky with the dumb office boy on the nightly golf course to momentarily please her wavering sexual desire. It has to be said that the men in this film don’t live up to their roles. The boss is an asshole, the father doesn’t listen, and the only thing the brother in law can think of is his money. The male characters are bystanders on the sideline, one-dimensional lightweights that merely accessorize the plot, which is driven by the emotionally complex interactions of the two sisters, Justine and Claire. As the end of the world approaches, they have to face the tragedy without any masculine comforting. Claire is ridden with terror, but Justine doesn’t fear the approaching apocalypse. Mankind is evil, she concludes, and the universe better off without it. She is longing to die, can’t wait to swap the bland reality she experienced for something that might turn out to be spiritually more fulfilling. 

This abstract desire to annihilate the human race and trade it in for something more sublime, is equally apparent in Andreas Gursky’s photograph Rhine II, which just sold for $4,3m at Christies in New York and broke the prize record in a photography sale. The large print shows the grey Rhine River framed by its green bed under a foggy sky. Ultra-minimalist composure, strangely attractive, but with every human trace carefully removed in the retouching process of the digital file. Why are the aesthetes longing for a post-human equilibrium so much these days? Both Gursky and van Trier suggest a pretty radical solution to the struggles of society in the 21st century: Complete wipe out. Let’s hope that this message can be seen in a metaphorical way, too, and be understood as a mere hint that it is time to change, soon. 

MELANCHOLIA played Cannes 2011 where Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress, and Toronto. It opened earlier this year in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Brazil, France, Estonia, the Netherlands, Greece, Ireland, Romania, the UK, Germany, Italy and Hungary. It opened earlier in November in Spain, Canada and the US. It goes on release in December in Portugal, Slovenia and Australia. It opens in January in Hong Kong and Turkey and in February in Japan.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 9 - MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE is a movie with a fascinating premise and a compelling central performance that is let down by a deeply non-credible plot and incredibly flawed cinematographer. It arrived at the London Film Festival fêted with praised and awards from the Sundance Film Festival, but sadly does not live up to the hype.


The central premise is to tell the story of a young girl in the immediate aftermath of her escape from a Charlie Manson like cult.  Day by day we see her struggle to adjust to normal society - her behaviour increasingly paranoid and aggressive - her family turning from accepting to irritated.  I really liked the novelty of taking this point of view. Rather than a lurid movie taking us into a cult in simple chronological fashion, it was far more fascinating to see the impact of the emotional manipulation in nightmarish flashbacks.  (That said, and to resist plot spoilers, I will simply say that I found the final scene to be needlessly "tricksy".)


Elizabeth Olsen plays the girl who has escaped - birth name Martha - but renamed by the cult leader Marcy May - a clever re-naming trick designed to alienate her from her former life and family ties.  I guess she'll forever be referred to as the "other" Olsen girl, but this performance should go some way to give her a name of her own.  Her performance is subtle, brave and deeply compelling - it's the backbone that keeps the movie together - and places her as a young talent to watch in the same peer group as Carey Mulligan and Evan Rachel Wood.


The tragedy is that her performance is undermined by a script by debut writer-director Sean Durkin that is utterly (and literally) incredible.  If your kid sister vanishes for two years, then suddenly calls you begging you to pick her up from the middle of nowhere, is in visible distress, covered in bruises, and starts acting really weirdly, wouldn't you ask what just happened?  Wouldn't you take her to a doctor immediately? Wouldn't you try to reach out to her?  I simply found the character of Lucy, Martha's sister, utterly unbelievable, and I wondered if this was deliberate on the part of Durkin or just a mistake, compounded by Sarah Paulin's icy, almost robotic, performance.  But even before that, I found the plot absurd. In the first scene, Martha escapes from the commune by running off into the woods, and then stops in the nearest town for some food.  One of the men from the cult tracks her down and looks menacing, but instead of hauling her ass back, simply let's her hang out in town assuming she'll come back of her own accord.  That just seemed laughably stupid.

Elizabeth Olsen (Martha) on the red carpet
for the UK premiere of  
MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE at 
the BFI London Film Festival 2011

The other major problem with this film is incredibly poor quality cinematography from DP Jody Lee Lipes. That's not to see each frame isn't beautifully composed - that there isn't brilliant work in creating trick shots - reflections.  But I really hate it when people use DV and create colour palettes where the blacks aren't true blacks but washed out greys. It muddies the picture, and reduces the intensity of emotion.  When Martha runs into the woods, for instance, the scene is less petrifying but the scene looks washed out.  


MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE played Sundance 2011 where it won the Directing Award - Dramatic. It also played Cannes, Sydney and Toronto. It opens today in the US. It opens on December 22nd in Sweden; on January 20th in Poland; on February 2nd in Russia; in Ireland and the UK on February 3rd; in Spain on February 24th; and in France and Germany on March 29th.