Mona Fastvold‘s “The Testomony of Ann Lee” tells the story, via hymnal music and choreography, of the founding chief of the Shakers as she makes an attempt to create an ecstatic utopia. Fastvold and her husband, producer/co-writer Brady Corbet, shot the Venice competitors premiere in 2024 in Hungary once more after “The Brutalist.”
Just like the Corbet-directed Oscar-winning movie from final 12 months, the filmmakers additionally shot “The Testomony of Ann Lee” on a finances (right here, $10 million) and on movie cameras (35mm, blown as much as 70mm for maximalist impact). At one level, they took the forged and crew aboard a totally operational 18th-century ship they present in Sweden, as Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried) transports her followers (together with Christopher Abbott as her husband, Lewis Pullman as her brother, and Thomasin McKenzie as her aide) from pre-industrial Manchester, England to colonial rural America.
Seyfried, Fastvold, Corbet, composer Daniel Blumberg (Oscar winner for “The Brutalist”), choreographer Celia Rowlson-Corridor (“Vox Lux”), producer Andrew Morrison, and extra for the movie convened on the Venice Movie Pageant press convention Monday afternoon forward of its premiere on the Sala Grande. “The Brutalist” gained finest director right here final 12 months, which makes Fastvold’s second movie as a director within the Venice competitors (after 2020’s “The World to Come”) one of many pageant’s hottest acquisition titles.
Make no mistake that the size of the film is very large, emphasizing hands-on, sensible filmmaking, from costumer Malgorzata Karpiuk designing many of the clothes by hand to Blumberg and Fastvold working from precise Shaker hymns to craft the songs.
Requested why she needed to go so massive for the story of Ann Lee, Fastvold stated, “Effectively, I believed she deserved it. Don’t you all? Don’t you suppose that Ann Lee deserved one thing that was grandiose and great? What number of tales have we seen about male icons on a grand scale? What number of tales time and again and once more? Can we not get to see one story a few lady like this? The one factor I might consider was ‘Jeanne d’Arc,’ that’s it. I simply needed her to have this house.”
One journalist within the room requested Corbet and Fastvold how they resolve who will direct a mission vs. solely write and produce it (they shared writing and producing duties on “The Brutalist” additionally). Corbet, maintaining his shades on indoors, spoke up.
“We firmly imagine which you could solely serve one grasp at a time. Mona had last reduce on this movie, which is one thing that’s clearly crucial to us, and one thing that we’ve spoken about publicly fairly a bit,” he stated. “She got here to me and stated, ‘I wish to make a movie about Ann Lee.’ We had been large followers of the design, the furnishings is totally gorgeous. The structure is critical, particularly within the northeastern a part of the US. It was all the time Mona’s movie. Mona has a background in performing arts and dance, and we realized fairly early on, as a result of the Shakers had been a musical folks, that the movie needed to be a musical.”
He continued, “When I’ve a mission I’m engaged on, I deliver it to her and say, OK, that is what I’m doing subsequent. We simply kind of trip that means.”
Corbet, who directed second-unit on the movie, continued, “I’m working for my director. It’s not as a result of I feel a director is all the time proper. It’s as a result of a director is all the time constant, and that continuity of imaginative and prescient is critical to me. I’m not concerned with watching movies which might be an beautiful corpse. I’m not concerned with these types of public artwork initiatives the place you’ll be able to find yourself with one thing just like the physique of a mermaid and the face of a dolphin. I need there to be actual continuity and consistency in a murals. After I learn a novel, I don’t wish to learn a novel written by 100 executives; I wish to learn a novel by one novelist.”
Corbet then turned to producer Andrew Morrison, co-founder of the manufacturing firm Kaplan, Morrison, who additionally steered “The Brutalist.” Requested how he received “Ann Lee” off the bottom for $10 million, he stated, “The objective [was] for [Mona] to have full inventive freedom, for her to get to actualize her imaginative and prescient with none kind of obstruction in her path. How do you make a film that spans somebody’s complete life, that’s an epic, that’s a musical, with no constraint and likewise a few celibate faith that not many individuals had been aware of earlier than? It was difficult, and we needed to discover companions who believed in it and supported it.”
“It was fairly a feat, as a result of as you’ll be able to think about, the elevator pitch for a Shaker musical was not the best factor to get off the bottom,” Corbet stated.
That Ann Lee sought a utopian society advocating for social equality makes for a story parallel to the setting on Fastvold’s set.
In attempting to “create a chunk of artwork within the enterprise as very male-dominated as nicely, I’m all the time attempting to create a tradition on set, a group on set that that may be a bit totally different, and to kind of create {that a} tradition that’s nurturing, that’s form, that has loads of empathy for everybody on on my units,” Fastvold stated. “Ann Lee’s story … actually spoke to me, the way in which that she is main. Despite the fact that I used to be raised in a secular family, with none form of relation to faith, I don’t prescribe to [all ] Ann Lee’s … concepts, however I do suppose that the way in which that she leads with empathy and kindness and needed to create an area the place everybody was equal, males, ladies, folks of colour, with empathy for youngsters as nicely at that age, at the moment interval, I feel is absolutely vital to speak about now.”