Exactly a year ago today U.S. director Brady Corbet world premiered his post-World War Two epic The Brutalist in a Venice, in a screening that would begin the film’s journey to two Golden Globes and three Oscars in the 97th Academy Awards.
Corbet was back in Venice on Monday but this time in support of his life and creative partner, Norwegian filmmaker and actress Mona Fastvold’s The Testament Of Ann Lee which world premieres in competition later today.
The musical film stars Amanda Seyfried as charismatic 18th century religious leader Ann Lee who founded the Shaker movement, known for its ecstatic singing and dancing as well as, later, its simple furniture and architecture.
Corbet, who co-wrote the screenplay, joined Fastvold on stage at the press conference but was happy to let his partner do the talking until a question was addressed to him on how they work together.
“We firmly believe that you can only serve one master at a time. Mona had final cut on this film, which is something that’s obviously very important to us, and something that we’ve spoken about publicly quite a bit,” said Corbet.
“She came to me and said, ‘I want to make a film about Ann Lee’. We were huge fans of the design. The furniture is absolutely stunning and the architecture is significant, especially in the northeastern part of the United States. It was always Mona’s film,” he continued.
Corbet said that Fastvold’s background in performing arts and dance had led to the realization early on in the project that The Testament of Ann Lee had to be a musical film.
“When I have a project I’m working on, I bring it to her and say, ‘Okay, this is what I’m doing next and we just sort of go back and forth that way,” he added.
Corbet worked as a second unit director on The Testament of Ann Lee, in the same way that Fastvold had held the position on The Brutalist.
“When I direct second unit on a film I’working for my director. It’s not because I think that a director is always right. It’s because a director is always consistent, and that continuity of vision is significant to me,” said Corbet.
“I’m not interested in watching films that are an exquisite corpse… you can end up with something like the body of a mermaid and the face of a dolphin. I want there to be real continuity and consistency in a work of art. When I read a novel, I don’t want to read a novel written by 100 executives. I want to read a novel by one novelist.”
Both Fastvold and Corbet heaped praise on their longtime producer Andrew Morrison at Kaplan Morrison, who was on the stage too, for pulling together finance and support for the project, while protecting its vision.
“Andrew got this movie made for 10 million bucks. It was quite a feat, because you as you can imagine, the elevator pitch for a Shaker musical was not the easiest thing to get off the ground,” said Corbet.
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