Director Mona Fastvold sets down in Venice today with musical Golden Lion contender The Testament Of Ann Lee, starring Amanda Seyfried as the titular 18th century religious leader and founder of the Shaker movement.
Fastvold said her desire to explore Lee’s life had partly been born out of her perception of the religious leader’s way of leading and how it chimed with own style on set.
“Obviously, it’s interesting talking about female leadership right now but I think for myself, personally, trying to make a movie, or create a piece of art in a business which is very male dominated… I’m always trying to create a culture on set, a community on set that is a bit different, a culture that is nurturing, that is kind, that has a lot of empathy,” she said.
“In Ann Lee’s story that really spoke to me, the way that she is leading, even though I was raised in a secular household, without any kind of relationship to religion. I don’t prescribe to Anne Lee’s ideas, but I do think that the way that she leads with empathy and kindness and wanting to create a space where everyone was equal, men, women, people of color, with empathy for children… at that time period, I think is really important to talk about now.”
Fastvold suggested later that it had also grown out of desire to tell stories about women who had made a difference throughout history.
“How many stories have we seen about male icons on a grand scale, how many stories, again and again and again. Can we not get to see one story about a woman like this? The only thing I could think of was Jeanne d’Arc. I just wanted her to have this space,” said the director.
Questioned on her choice of Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-winning actress Seyfried (Mank, The Dropout) for the role, Fastvold said she admired her strength.
“Amanda has a lot of power. She’s really strong. She is a wonderful mother. She is a little mad, and so I knew that she could access those things. She could access the kindness, the gentleness, the tenderness, and she could also access this power and this madness,” said the director.
“I think that at our age, there is something really exciting about exploring the combination of all of that… I saw that Amanda had all of that, and that she was ready to really go full force into that.”
Born in the northern English city of Manchester in 1736, Ann Lee was the charismatic leader of the religious movement that came to be known as the Shakers, for its ecstatic singing and dancing that involved shaking.
Persecuted in England for her loud form of worship and challenging the doctrines of the established church, she left for America in 1774 with a small band of followers, where she continued her mission to convert people to the Shaker movement.
Hollywood star Seyfried, who has previously talked about the challenges of adopting a northern English accent as well as pulling off the singing scenes in the film, praised the sense of community created by Fastvold.
“It was such a joyous experience, especially the way it was led by Mona, and the way we all felt, almost like in the Shaker movement. We all had a job to do, and we all felt very equal. It felt very community driven,” said Seyfried.
“The experience was so incredible… the reason I was able to face these challenges as an artist, which there were many… was because I felt completely protected and held up and surrounded by people loving artists, and in a place where everybody knew the value of this, of making this, and understood Mona’s vision,” she added.
The Testament Of Ann Lee is the latest collaboration from indie power couple Fastvold and Brady Corbet, who were in Venice last year with the latter’s Oscar-winning The Brutalist.
Seyfried, Fastvold, Corbet, who co-wrote the screenplay, were joined on the stage by choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall and composer Daniel Blumberg, who won an Oscar for his majestic The Brutalist score.
“There’s a an amazing amount of beautiful shaker hymns that we were were able to draw on,” said Blumberg on the process of writing the music for the film. “We just listened to all of them, and that was really beautiful to be together and then develop those into what you hear in the film.”
The new feature is lead produced by their longtime producer Andrew Morrison at Kaplan Morrison with Joshua Horsfield at Intake Films and iktória Petrányi at Proton Cinema. Charades is handling international sales, while CAA Media Finance is looking after North America.