From Mamma Mia! to Shaker drama: Seyfried stars at Venice Film Festival

VENICE: Remember Amanda Seyfried as the sunny star of the ABBA “Mamma Mia” song-fests? Well, her latest musical “The Testament of Ann Lee” could not be more different while the film, which premieres at the Venice Film Festival on Monday.

The movie follows Lee from her life as a child labourer in northern England in the 1700s to becoming the celibate leader of a radical Christian sect in America known as the Shakers.

“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 film’s Norwegian director Mona Fastvold told reporters.

Fastvold said she cast Seyfried in the demanding lead role for her ability to access both gentle and fierce qualities that the complex character demanded.

“She (Seyfried) is a little mad,” the director said. “I knew that she could access those things – the kindness, the gentleness, the tenderness. And she could also access this power and this madness.”

Seyfried said she had felt empowered on the set to let go of herself as her character entered a trance-like condition, marked by ecstatic, trembling, exuberant acts of devotion, that gave the Shakers their name.

“Anything goes because there’s so much freedom, and the only threat is to not use that freedom to your advantage as an artist to go as far deep as you can go to make the craziest sounds. I’ve never been let loose in this way.”

The American actor acknowledged though that she had tried to convince Fastvold to find a British actor for the role.

“I kept saying, go with somebody English because the accent seemed so hard. And that wasn’t the hardest part, but it was just, I saw the love that Mona had. This was her baby, and I didn’t want to F. it up.”

While not a conventional musical, the film incorporates choreographed movement and rhythmic, repetitive songs inspired by Shaker rituals, drawing on some 1,000 original hymns.

The Shakers, formally the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, were known for strict celibacy and gender equality.

Their communities emphasized simplicity, collective labour and spiritual devotion, and also came to be celebrated for their simple architecture and wooden furniture.

The co-writer Brady Corbet, who is Fastvold’s husband and directed “The Brutalist”, which was a hit at Venice last year, said securing funding had been challenging.

‘The idea came to me several years ago, when I happened to hear some children talking about how, in a company that produces potato chips.

“Our producer … got this movie made for 10 million bucks. The elevator pitch for a Shaker musical was not the easiest thing to get off the ground,” he said.

The film is Fastvold’s third feature after “The Sleepwalker” in 2014 and “The World to Come” in 2020. It is one of 21 movies competing for the top Golden Lion prize, which will be awarded on September 6.