Mona Fastvold was raised by secular standards, so it may seem surprising to compare the writer/director’s strictness with that of ambiguity. 18th-century spiritual leader Ann Lee. However, I stumble upon the Mancunian story .“mother” of the Shakers, a Norwegian-born, New York-based filmmaker found the title her leadership qualities matched by the ways she herself shaped the nature of her film: compassion, kindness and a spirit of collaboration.
Alongside his writing (and living) partner, Brady Corbet, Fastvold wrote one of them 2024describing movies, The Brutalist. As the couple continues to delve into certain areas that form belief, identity and artistic culture – and composer Daniel Blumberg too – Ann Lee’s Testament emerges as a technological and musical marvel; a complex birthing doll of sorts that, literally, shakes and shakes with emotion, weakness and strength.
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LWLies: I’m curious about your first meeting with Ann Lee. What was it about the Shakers story that felt so naturally cinematic to you?
Fastvold: The Shakers serve up a delightful song and dance, and I was more than happy to catch the move again. I was reading about their first worship meetings, hundreds of people in a small town house in Manchester dancing and shaking and moving… I had such powerful images coming to me. The story just begged it to be a very musical, movement-based piece, and that was really cinematic. Then, of course, there is Shaker architecture and design, which became the foundation of American design. A lot draws the line back to that. There is nothing more beautiful than the beautiful buildings they built and the things they created. So it was very exciting to go from that wild, chaotic, intoxicating beginning to this simple, synchronized, balanced aesthetic ending.
Spatiality is a big player, and in some ways it’s similar to what you tested on The Brutalist. Can you say more about how Shaker material culture influenced the visual grammar of the film?
It’s funny because we didn’t feel that the two projects were particularly connected when we were writing them, but then when we started making Ann Leewe were like, i think we have this obsession with chairs? [Laughs.] Of course there are many discussions about faith in The Brutalist and, so they talk to each other, and they’re both about American design as well. Shakerism shaped design all the way to Ikea, inspired by Shaker furniture in its simplicity. But that’s like a fast fashion version of the furniture version, right? And that is the opposite of Shakerism. They were trying to create things that were functional, simple, beautiful and would last forever, and they were trying to perfect that. For them, building something or building was another form of worship, another form of prayer. I have this quote from the movie where Ann Lee says, .‘Do all your work as if you had a thousand years to live, and as you would if you knew you had to die tomorrow,’ and it’s about this really deep thing of whatever you do, you just put all your love and care into it. It is a donation.
I’m sure that’s something you can relate to as a filmmaker.
Definitely. There is a little madness in wanting to work hard at something, dedication 15, 16 hours a day, making everyone very uncomfortable and moving forward trying to perfect this thing into existence. It’s crazy. What motivates you to do that? What kind of faith? I grew up in a non-believing family, I was not raised religiously. But there is something about it that I wanted to investigate and understand better.
Did that Shaker spirit enter the partnership?
Always. You are single. The day. For all of us, and for everything we do. My production designer, Sam Bader, and my cinematographer, William Rexer, all felt very inspired.
for their work ethic. You couldn’t just put something negative or negative into your frame, you had to put thought into it. That spirit just bled into what we were doing, and everyone really took to that journey.
There’s something about accepting discipline and the process of filming and pursuing a dedicated art, even if it’s not easy, that reflects that spirit as well.
We were going back to more analogue techniques. Nations deserve this story, but I’m also happy with it and I think it’s really good. All the paintings in the film were inspired by Shaker paintings and were hand painted and shot on film. All the credits are hand-painted and shot on film, but again VFX and the set extensions were hand painted on glass and married to the image. Generally, digital matte painters create fixed extensions. Here, everything is done by hand by this wonderful artist, Leigh Took, using an old technique that people don’t use much anymore. Everything is analog. And Leigh Took’s studio is my dream! He does a great job of modeling. He worked with Tim Burton earlier in his career.
I was very happy to restore the traditional matte paintings on glass because I was watching Years of Innocence and they have these beautiful wide pictures of New York that are clearly paintings, and even if there’s something to it, it’s painting. Obviously, I knew I couldn’t build New York or Manchester, but I knew I had to do it digitally or organically, and I was more than happy to do it this way. Then, I marry the photo with my photo that I shot on film, then I print it on film, and I shoot it again… It’s a very long process, but it’s also very beautiful because it’s a straight line.
The film is being shot 35mm and improved 70mm. Considering the ambition of this project, did the physical limitations of the film rolls affect the rhythm of your shoots?
Not at all. I wanted to shoot 35mm not in large format because I wanted to work with light cameras for all motion work. Sometimes I find it incredibly nice that a camera has weight and weight to it, but in this case, light was very important. Celluloid was not the limit. I’ve never been one to roll endlessly. And, you know, digital also costs money, and you spend a lot of time at the range afterwards because you come back with a raw image. I can feel it changing now actually. Many people like the movie. I don’t think one is better than the other, they are just different. Mine and Brady [Corbet]the reason we’re on a soapbox about celluloid is to protect it. We don’t want to lose that tool from the toolbox. We need to make sure that all the tools are available. I’m really interested in modern technology, and I’m really interested in old technology, and whatever is the best tool for telling a story, and painting a picture, that’s what I’m going to use.
It’s interesting to think about the nature of the film. That’s not the case indeed a biopic, no indeed for music. Have you always thought so? What are your thoughts on the genre and that kind of division?
I tend to write in a way that is against my genre. If you’re too comfortable with the story, if you see the first five minutes of the film and you understand exactly what the last five minutes are going to be like, that doesn’t really excite me, even if it’s really well done. Filmmaking is a relatively new medium compared to, say, literature. If you pick up even an airport novel or something, it can often be much larger in its narrative structure than almost 99 percentage of all movies. When I write, I follow the logic of the dream. That’s the space that I like to be in, so I like to intentionally digress with another character and come back to the story, or a character appears without introducing them and maybe they’re going to take up more space than you thought they would at first. It’s fun to challenge that a bit. That said, with Ann Lee I wanted to follow a human frame because I knew that the movement and the music would stand out. I knew it wasn’t going to be folk music because we weren’t going to sing straight.
