How ‘The Testament of Ann Lee’ Mirrors the Shaker Aesthetic

The first half of “The Testament of Ann Lee” captures the religious awakening of the eponymous Shaker founder (Amanda Seyfried) and her journey to proselytizing and persecution in Manchester, England. The dramatic arc of the film’s first half — filled with the ecstasy of God’s embrace and the agony of imprisonment — is told through musical numbers, adapted from the Shakers’ ecstatic worship, dance, hymns, and music (watch the video above to learn more).

Co-writer and director Mona Fastvold, while a guest on this week’s episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, discussed how these scenes were shot with all the big filmmaking bravado of a studio musical; but staged in intentionally confined spaces.

“Everything is lit with hundreds of candles. There’s so much smoke and sweat and human beings pressed together in small spaces,” said Fastvold of the Manchester scenes.

‘The Testament of Ann Lee‘Searchlight Pictures

It’s a visual language that dramatically evolves in the film’s second half, as Lee leads a small group of devoted followers across the Atlantic in search of religious freedom in the new world.

“We wanted there to be this breath of something fresh, new, different, a lightness to it,” said Fastvold. “We wanted this idea, this hopefulness of what could be in America to be communicated visually.”

The dark, muted Manchester color palette shifts to embrace the wide open space and colors of the American landscape (shot in Hungary and Sweden). As the frame widens, the pacing slows, and the Shakers’ movement pauses, what Fastvold captures is how, out of the expanse of America, the Shakers start to find structure. A structure rooted in their devotion to work.

“[Work] was part of their worship too, it wasn’t just song and dance,” said Fastvold. “As they came to America, the religion grew, and Ann Lee’s thoughts around religion were that you could pray by creating, by building a chair, by creating an object, or these beautiful boxes — those were all moments of prayer.”

That religious practice would lead to the famous Shaker aesthetics, most notably seen in furniture, but also wooden boxes, staircases, banisters, and architecture. The foundations for this grew out of the ten years, 1774-1784, Lee led the Shakers to lay down roots in Albany County, but the religion would not reach its height — both in numbers (approximately 6,000) and design aesthetics — until 50 years after Lee died. A timeline Fastvold decided to compress for her film.

“I wanted to tell the story of Mother Ann, but I also wanted to bring in something that we know and recognize as American design,” said Fastvold. “It’s a quote in the film, ‘Work every day as if it was your last day on earth, or, as if you had a thousand years to live.’ And that’s why their design still lives on and really is the main inspiration for American design.  Shakerism — these clean lines, and the chairs, the staircases, and the houses — is really what everything is built on, even IKEA actually is very inspired by Shakers. The beauty and the simplicity and how something functioned well — I think that’s why we’re still so attracted to them, because someone was spending all their time having a religious experience creating a piece of design.”

For the secular Fastvold, Lee’s finding spiritual purpose in the act of creation was partially what drew her to tell the story of the radical (rooted in gender equality) utopia she set out to build in America. It was also something she and her filmmaking collaborators drew upon for inspiration. Explained Fastvold,  “What is it that drives you to work that hard, to create something that you just want to exist?  I just want this movie to exist, I want it to exist in a really specific way. You can call it madness, you can call it faith, or a form of religion, but it’s that deep wish to create something of beauty.” Fastvold also wanted Shakers’ discovery of their craft to be mirrored in the evolution of her film’s visual language.

“[As their] ideas and their religion begin to develop more, we are moving into the Shaker aesthetics,” said Fastvold. “So by the [film’s] the end point everything is so refined, so clean, so pristine.”

‘The Testament of Ann Lee’Searchlight Pictures

Production designer Sam Bader and his team hand-painted set extensions for both their sets, which were constructed with the camera in mind, so Fastvold could create compositions that immersed the audience in the Shaker design as they built their communal spaces and homes. Fastvold and cinematographer William Rexer also switched film stocks, so the grain was finer and the image more pristine. And as Shaker aesthetic takes hold, the religion’s expression through movement and music returns to film, but with less ecstatic and more refined movements. The dance, like the religion, finding a tighter structure and oneness with its environment.

To hear Mona Fastvold’s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.