Do We Need Saints?

In “The Testament of Ann Lee,” a new film directed by Mona Fastvold, Amanda Seyfried plays the founder and leader of the Shaker movement—a woman believed by her followers to be the second coming of Christ. Fastvold uses song and dance to convey the fervor that Mother Ann shares with her acolytes. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how such depictions of religious devotion might land with modern viewers. They trace this theme from Martin Scorsese’s docuseries “The Saints” to “Lux,” a recent album in which Rosalía mines the divine for musical inspiration. These stories, many of them centuries old, might seem out of step with modern concerns. But we’re still borrowing their iconography—and anointing saints of our own—today. “The bracing and sort of terrifying thing about them is precisely that they are human beings,” Cunningham says. “What they say to us is, ‘If you had the juice, you could do it, too.’ ” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “Marty Supreme” (2025)“The Testament of Ann Lee” (2025)“Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints” (2024—)Rosalia’s “Lux”“Conclave” (2024)Michelangelo’s “The Temptation of Saint Anthony”“The Flowers of Saint Francis” (1950)Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”“The bizarre rise of ‘convent dressing,’ ” by Eleanor Dye (The Daily Mail)“What Kind of New World Is Being Born?,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)“Patricia Lockwood Goes Viral,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker) See Critics at Large live at 92NY on February 19: https://www.92ny.org/event/vinson-cunningham-naomi-fry-and-alexandra-schwartz New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Critics’ Cult Classics: Hannah Goldfield on the Food World’s Secret Tastemakers

In the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to the topic of cult classics, Naomi Fry talks with the New Yorker staff writer Hannah Goldfield about how that designation app...

13 Aug 39min

Critics’ Cult Classics: Hanif Abdurraqib on Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night”

When it dropped in January of 1997, Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night” thrilled some listeners and confounded others. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to resurfac...

6 Aug 46min

The Irony and the Ecstasy of Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead’s ascent in the literary world has seemed, like much of what he does, impressively effortless. Though he’s best known for “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys”—both of whic...

30 Juli 50min

The Golden Age of the American Idiot

The new game show “Nation’s Dumbest,” flips the classic “Jeopardy!” script on its head. The format: twelve famous-ish contestants are peppered with basic logic and trivia questions. The twist is that ...

23 Juli 52min

Who Owns the Odyssey?

In its nearly three-thousand-year history, the Odyssey has undergone as many twists and turns as its protagonist does on his journey home to Ithaca. Its origins as oral poetry suggest countless revisi...

16 Juli 50min

An American Playlist

This week, to commemorate two hundred and fifty years of the American experiment, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz present an American playlist. On this special episode, the hosts ...

2 Juli 59min

From The Political Scene: The Politics of the Big Game

Critics at Large will be back next week. In the meantime, you can hear Vinson Cunningham and Naomi Fry on a recent episode of The New Yorker’s Political Scene, hosted by Tyler Foggatt, where they cons...

25 Juni 37min

Steven Spielberg’s Blockbusters

When “Jaws” hit theatres in 1975, no one—neither the studio executives involved nor the film’s twenty-six-year-old director, Steven Spielberg—was betting on its success. But it dominated at the box of...

18 Juni 55min