There are a lot of things that Oscar pundits assume could happen this year, just because they happened last year – that “Wicked: For Good” will do what “Wicked” did, Jeremy Allen White and “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” will do what Timothée Chalamet and “A Complete Unknown” did, “Sentimental Value” will do what “Anora” did for NEON out of Cannes, Wagner Moura and “The Secret Agent” will be pushed by Brazil like Fernanda Torres and “I’m Still Here” were, and much more. Now they must also consider whether an epic, experimental collaboration from Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet will replicate the success of “The Brutalist” from last year.
“The Testament of Ann Lee” was officially announced as a Venice Film Festival world premiere and placed into TIFF, and will probably play at NYFF at some point, too. It wasn’t on many radars in early summer and still doesn’t have a distributor yet, but it aims to have enough raves out of Venice to get picked up and turned into an unlikely Oscar contender, just like “The Brutalist” was when it started out at Venice.
Corbet directed that breakout festival hit, transformed from a cult indie director into an Oscar frontrunner, made his past Oscar-winning lead actor into a winner again, and had his wife and co-writer Fastvold come along as a Best Original Screenplay nominee with him. Now, a year later, it is Fastvold’s turn to try and direct a breakout festival hit, transform herself from a cult indie director into an Oscar contender, turn a past Oscar-nominated lead into a winner, and bring Corbet along as her co-writer this time.
“The Testament of Ann Lee” is set in a distant past, similar to “The Brutalist,” and aims to comment on both our past and present, much like “The Brutalist” does. Yet in this case, “The Testament of Ann Lee” isn’t a post-WWII immigrant/American story, but a story set about two centuries earlier that tackles religion and cult-like worship instead, through the eyes of the founder of the Shakers religious sect. What’s more, while “The Brutalist” got much of its power through Daniel Blumberg’s Oscar-winning score, “The Testament of Ann Lee” takes it a step further by being a full-on musical, in some capacity or another.
“The Brutalist” also powered itself as an awards comeback for Adrien Brody, which succeeded in getting him his second Oscar. “The Testament of Ann Lee” is actually led by a more recent Oscar nominee than Brody was this time last year, since Amanda Seyfried got into Best Supporting Actress in 2020 for “Mank.” For good measure, Seyfried then won the 2022 Best Actress Miniseries Emmy for “The Dropout,” so she is far from an awards season comeback story – but “The Testament of Ann Lee” could be her next step forward as a first-time Best Actress Oscar nominee.
“The Brutalist” also received two supporting acting nominations, but with “The Testament of Ann Lee,” it’s unclear who else, besides Seyfried, could stand out. Thomasin McKenzie is on some early radars for Best Supporting Actress, which might make her the equivalent of “The Brutalist’s” Felicity Jones, although Jones was a past Oscar nominee beforehand. “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Thunderbolts*” breakout Lewis Pullman headlines the male supporting actors, yet maybe the closest thing this movie has to a Guy Pearce – a longtime supporting/character actor who finally got his due as a nominee last year – could be Tim Blake Nelson.
Maybe expecting “The Testament of Ann Lee” to be an across-the-board and win competitive contender like “The Brutalist” is a tall order. Certain Oscar voters might not take to a female-directed story of a female religious leader like they did with the story of a tortured male immigrant/architectural genius, while its sure-to-be experimental musical elements may not be their preferred kind of twist on the genre like “Emilia Pérez” was for much of last year. For that matter, it still needs to find a distributor to push it through the season, like “The Brutalist” ultimately found with A24 right out of Venice.
When A24 bought “The Brutalist,” it seemed puzzling at first, since it already looked like it had “Sing Sing” locked as its top priority for Oscar season. But it was already losing steam with “Sing Sing” by that time and would soon turn all its attention towards “The Brutalist,” to the point where “Sing Sing” went from early-season darling to snubbed out of Best Picture completely. A year later, A24 has two projected top priorities: Chalamet and Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme” and Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, and Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine,” which is also set to premiere at Venice.
However, since A24 doesn’t appear to have any other major Oscar prospects this year, it may need to acquire something like “The Testament of Ann Lee” as insurance. If “The Smashing Machine” isn’t a hit at Venice and doesn’t muscle Johnson into Oscar contention for the first time, and if A24 really does have “Marty Supreme” skip every fall festival before its Christmas opening, then hinging its entire awards season on the Safdie brothers will look even riskier than it already did. Perhaps placing its backup hopes on an 18th-century religious-based arthouse musical doesn’t look like a safer bet, but at least Fastvold, Corbet, and Seyfried are names the Academy has voted for lately.
If reviews from Venice do put Fastvold in the same kind of rarified air Corbet had at Venice last year, if Seyfried charges into a lead acting race like Brody did, and if A24 or some other distributor with an opening then pounces on it, then “The Testament of Ann Lee” will be assumed to be the next “The Brutalist” beyond just its creative team. It might not be placed as a top-three or top-five kind of film, depending on what the rest of the Best Picture field looks like after the fall festivals, but everyone would be on the lookout for it to do something.
Just because a writer or director has one big success at the Oscars doesn’t mean their next film will do the same – otherwise the likes of “The Son” and “Saltburn” would have turned out much differently. But because so many of us have recency bias, it makes us put sequels to past nominees, follow-up films from recent winners, and films that merely sound like recent contenders into preseason ballots sight unseen. It has taken a while for “The Testament of Ann Lee” to get that kind of treatment. Yet, now that it is locked into Venice and TIFF, and we remember how long it was last summer until we took “The Brutalist” seriously, many of us may not want to make that mistake again.
“The Brutalist” didn’t appear to be a typical kind of Oscar favorite, and didn’t appear to be made by someone the Academy would embrace, yet Venice, TIFF, and NYFF changed those assumptions in a hurry. As such, now that Corbet and Fastvold have switched roles for “The Testament of Ann Lee” and now that a Venice, TIFF, and likely NYFF path has opened up again, there’s more early faith that what happened with “The Brutalist” is ready to happen once more.
But while rapturous early word from Venice lifted “The Brutalist” from under the radar and into the Oscar frontlines, does that make “The Testament of Ann Lee” more likely to do the same, or face the complete opposite? Will Venice embrace Fastvold for her directorial vision like it did for Corbet’s, or will it use a harsher, if not double standard? And is one old-time, heavily music-driven, possibly 70mm filmed, and possibly A24-purchased epic really the same as another, especially when the on and off-screen faces of it are actually much more different?
If it is not, “The Testament of Ann Lee” will go from suddenly being on the radar to dropping off it very quickly, especially if Venice competition like “Jay Kelly,” “Bugonia,” “Frankenstein,” “The Smashing Machine,” “No Other Choice,” “A House of Dynamite,” and “After the Hunt” does live up to expectations. But if history does repeat itself, whether or not it’s to the same degree as last year, the memories of “The Brutalist” will help put “The Testament of Ann Lee” on many an Oscar season pulpit.
Are you excited for “The Testament Of Ann Lee?” Do you think it will have a similar path as “The Brutalist” in not just in fall film festival run but also in its awards season run? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account and check out the team’s latest Oscar predictions here.
