ANG LEE HAS continued to surprise audiences with his versatility, and many were interested to learn of his initial foray into the genre of Civil War epic with Ride with the Devil.1 As a study of the psychological subtleties and conflict of war, this film has much to recommend it. This is a period piece, and, as such, can bring to life the remote era of conflicted North-South relations, racial and class issues, social struggle, etc., which were in high relief during the American Civil War. Set in the border states of Kansas and Missouri, the film explores the nature of lawlessness and violence of war fought on the periphery through the eyes and thoughts of 16-year-old Jake Roedel. During the winter of 1861 Roedel grows up quickly, choosing to defend the South with a group of young cohorts and experiencing a brutal, lawless parody of war without standards or mercy. The film is based on Daniel Woodrell’s novel Woe to Live On (1987); the author himself is a direct descendant of Ozarker ancestors who fought in the Civil War. How Ang Lee became involved is explained by Woodrell in Liz Rowlinson’s interview with him for the Richmond Review:
The film came about in a series of happy accidents. The book came and went, wrapped in lavish silence from reviewers and readers, but a woman named Anne Carey read it in 1987 while working for another producer and liked it. Years later she was working for the production company associated with Ang Lee. He said he’d like to make a film that wasn’t all domestic drama, she gave him the book, he read it in one night and they bought it. The book was scarcely known, so Ms. Carey was the conduit of my good fortune.2
In bringing this historical drama to the screen, Ang Lee provides a rare glimpse into this period as both a literary landmark and a dramatic narrative. Moreover, he stays true to the period by working with a script rife with the metaphors and allusions of Civil War America, creating a film with daring poetic style (which could partially explain its commercial failure). Viewers of this drama are offered an exposure to metaphorical conundrums as well as florid and expressive language—a challenge greater than that usually offered at the multiplex.
Ride with the Devil deals with a number of ideas typical of an Ang Lee project, such as racial tension, intolerance, class issues, love and marriage, as well as gender and sexuality, the fragmentary nature of the narrative, globalization/cultural identity, etc. The film assumes a high level of knowledge about the Civil War, from a time when the world was technologically and mechanically less advanced and when human codes of behavior differed markedly from modern times. This film deals with human behavior from a time period more than one hundred years ago; the conservative behavior of the period, especially among men and women, seems quite alien to modern sensibilities. The different concerns of the period are illustrated by codes of honor which no longer have contemporary importance; these include a marriage that takes place to legitimize an illegitimate child. In addition, the film deals with racism and the changes that take place in the relationship between the young black man and the young white protagonist. In a letter-reading scene, the film suggests that only one of the boys in the group could read; this rate of illiteracy among a group of young men in their twenties seems surprising to modern audiences. Furthermore, the music used in the film has a strong Celtic and bluegrass flavor, adding to its historically-distant and wistful atmosphere.
The Genre of the Western
Ang Lee avoids the clichés of a typical gunpowder-and-uniform Civil War movie, and dispels preconceptions of what the “western” as a genre should be. In the place of a standard Hollywood war movie, he offers an “intimate epic”—a slow-moving world of human relationships that is alternately fragile and violent. The film has been criticized by followers of Civil War history as “inauthentic” because the story focuses almost exclusively on fictitious characters rather than the real-life heroes and villains of the Civil War. However, Ride with the Devil does not try to bring a documentary view to the Civil War, but instead creates a tender and thoughtful portrait of the true emotional and psychological struggles within war itself: idealism, loyalty, affection, betrayal, hardship, compromise, and love. Lee stages massive battle scenes with competence, but the film’s focus is on the emotional journey of its single main character, Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire).
While at the outset Roedel appears to merely drift along with the tide of events, his story becomes the film’s central story: a narrative of misguided loyalty in a longing for acceptance and a place to call “home.” Jake Roedel and his black counterpart, Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright), are examples of loyalty stretched to the limits. Roedel is a German immigrant seeking to gain acceptance into the world of Southern civility, and Daniel Holt is a freed Southern slave who travels with his former owner and childhood friend George Clyde (Simon Baker), who also purchased his freedom. Within the tension of war and the constant threat of violence, Roedel and Holt are tested in a crucible of conflicting loyalties. When they are pushed too far and the tension finally snaps, these two characters suddenly find themselves “free”—new men with a stronger identity are brought to birth. This film does its finest work as it illustrates the emotional growth that human beings experience as they mature—as old ties are broken and they are forced to face who they really are and what they will become. Over the course of the film, Jake Roedel is transformed very realistically from naïve boy to emotionally mature man. In addition, both Jake Roedel and Daniel Holt exhibit traits of mercy, gratitude, and civility which make them stand apart from the other characters. Daniel Holt is silent through many of the initial scenes, still indicative of the bondage from which he only recently escaped. However, as the film goes on, and he and Roedel strike up an unlikely friendship; the two stand out from the crowd as the true vestige of decency and integrity in a world turned upside down by war and conflicting loyalties.
Among a sleep-deprived band of ragtag soldiers, Jake Roedel and Daniel Holt begin to doubt their allegiance to the Southern cause prior to the raid on Lawrence, Kansas, in Ang Lee’s penetrating look at the American Civil War.
Language Used in Ride with the Devil
One of the most compelling aspects of Ride with the Devil for the viewer is its intricate use of language. The script, adapted from Daniel Woodrell’s novel Woe to Live On by James Schamus, is a compilation of authentic-sounding nineteenth-century speech. With its rolling, poetic lines, it comes across like the prose of Herman Melville or Mark Twain. Certainly Shamus and Woodrell must have been intimately familiar with great nineteenth-century American writers to be able to imitate the rhythms of their texts in so grand a fashion. Only someone immersed in the literature of the period would have been able to successfully re-create the actual atmosphere and feeling of nineteenth-century American English.
The effect of this authentic detail—language of the period—is remarkable. Actors Tobey Maguire and Jewel Kilcher (playing Sue Lee Shelley) actually seem to be transported back in time—and not by clothing and setting alone. The elegance of nineteenth-century English at the time of the American Civil War is given life again, as if in the letters of soldiers of the period, or in the prose of fledgling Southern regionalism. It is a treat for the ear to listen to the delightful cadences and lengthy sentences of nineteenth-century speech. Even seemingly simple statements become long-winded, meandering, and poetic; jokes become funnier, seemingly more clever and sophisticated when couched in these terms. Vocabulary used is more elegant than that of a modern-set film, thus affording many opportunities for exposure to gracious and eloquent speech with beautiful idioms and lyrical grammar.
The young Southerners in the film are from Lafayette County in western Missouri, and they join a band of Confederate guerillas early in the war. Most of them are the sons of plantation owners or farmers and have seen their fathers or elder brothers killed by Northerners in raids, or had their own homes burned to the ground. These men constantly refer to themselves as “Southern men,” or “sons of Missouri.” One of the most interesting characters is Jake Roedel (also known as “Dutchy”—a racially-motivated nickname), the son of a German immigrant. Some of the Southerners have trouble accepting a German into their gang, but when his father asks him to relocate to St. Louis to wait out the war in the safety of the big city, he refuses sharply, with an attiude of similar prejudice, “I’m not going to go to St. Louis to live with the Lincoln-loving Germans.”
The movie tells its story slowly (nearly three hours in length). It lingers in the pleasure of casual conversations between friends and, typically of Ang Lee, leaves silence for the viewer to digest the subtext of what is being said. There is little use of profanity, and only between men, accurately reflecting the moral standards of the period. A typical example of the lazy, “down-home” dialect from Ride with the Devil comes during a scene where the two main protagonists, Jake Roedel and Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich), are camping out under the stars:
| Jack: |
What is it, Jake? I hear you ruminating louder than a cow chewing in my ear and it’s keeping me from my sleep. |
An opening exchange in the film also introduces this conversational style, as the two friends observe the final moments of a wedding and the departure of the bride and groom:
| Jake: |
I’ve been thinking, Jack Bull. A wedding is a peculiar thing. |
| Jack: |
It’s no more peculiar, Jake, than slavery. |
| Jake: |
Well, that’s certain. That’s why I’ve often wondered for what cause those Northerners are so anxious to change our Southern institutions. For in both North and South, men are every day enslaved at the altar regardless of their state or color. |
| Jack: |
That is a type of subjugation. We shall avoid it, Jake. |
What seems unusual here to modern-day sensibilities is the use of such erudite vocabulary between teenagers: “subjugation,” “institutions,” and “peculiar.” This conversation takes place at a casual, joking moment in the film to indicate that the two friends regularly speak to each other in this florid style. Another example is the following lightly humorous conversation between two best friends in the film:
| (Camping out, Jack Bull Chiles and Jake Roedel discuss Jake’s finger, which was shot off in a skirmish.) |
| Jack: |
My father’s under the dirt to stay. Like that’s gone to stay, too. |
| Jake: |
My finger? |
| Jack: |
Mmm-hmm. |
| Jake: |
Well, so it is. And it makes me notable by the loss. |
| Jack: |
You sound pleased … as if that finger’d been pesterin’ you for rings. |
| Jake: |
No. It was a fine finger and I’d rather have it still, but … it was took from me and it’s been et by chickens for sure. And I say, what is the good side to this amputation? And there is one. |
| Jack: |
Name it, Jake. |
| Jake: |
Well, you say one day some Federals catch up to me in a thicket. They would riddle me and hang me and no Southern man would find me for weeks or months and when they did I’d be bad meat pretty well rotted to a glob. |
| Jack: |
That’s scientifically accurate, I’m afraid. I’ve seen it. |
| Jake: |
I’d be a mysterious gob of rot. And people would say, “Who was that?” Then surely someone would look up and say, “Why it’s nubbin’ fingered Jake Roedel.” Then you could go and tell my father that I was clearly murdered and he wouldn’t be tortured by uncertain wonders. |
| Jack: |
And that’s the good of it? |
| Jake: |
Yes sir, that’s the good. |
The ear of the writer is perfectly attuned to the dialect of his subjects, much like Mark Twain’s attention to dialect in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In its slowness of pace, it challenges the modern audience’s concept of time, and hearkens back to a more civilized era.
Another example is this conversation between Sue Lee Shelley and Roedel as they are discussing rumors of their engagement:
| Sue Lee: |
So do you wanna marry me? |
| Jake: |
No, not too bad. |
| Sue Lee: |
Good. That’s good news, ’cause I wouldn’t marry you for a wagonload full of gold. |
Another example is this formal conversation between Mackeson (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and Roedel as they face off against one another, where Roedel gives an almost polite response to Mackeson’s threat:
| Mackeson: |
Why you little Dutch son of a bitch. You do what I tell you or I’ll kill you. |
| Jake: |
(pulls his gun a few inches from Pitt’s face) And when do you figure to do this mean thing to me Mackeson? Is this very moment convenient for you? It is for me. |
The language in Ride with the Devil accurately reflects how the people of the time spoke, according to the letters and written narratives from that period. The dialogue of Ride with the Devil has been criticized because the actors in the film speak slowly and repeat themselves often. However, this is true not only of the time but also of southern dialects of the present day. The ornate style of the language reflects the way the people of Jake and Jack Bull’s class thought, and in this way the film accurately captures the atmosphere and nuance of the American South. The scene where Jake and Jack are eating with their host family in the winter holds some of the most stirring and realistic Civil War movie dialogue. The host makes the statement that the Northern side will most likely win the war because they use education (“the schoolhouse”) to indoctrinate the children to “think and talk the same free-thinkin’ way they do with no regard to station, custom, propriety.”
| Mr. Evans: |
You ever been to Lawrence, Kansas, young man? |
| Jack: |
(scoffs) No, I reckon not Mr. Evans. I don’t believe I’d be too welcome in Lawrence. |
| Mr. Evans: |
I didn’t think so. Before this war began, my business took me there often. As I saw those Northerners build that town, I witnessed the seeds of our destruction being sown. |
| Jack: |
The foundin’ of that town was truly the beginnin’ of the Yankee invasion. |
| Mr. Evans: |
I’m not speakin’ of numbers, nor even abolitionist trouble makin’. It was the schoolhouse. Before they built their church, even, they built that schoolhouse. And they let in every tailor’s son … and every farmer’s daughter in that country. |
| Jack: |
Spellin’ won’t help you hold a plow any firmer. Or a gun either. |
| Mr. Evans: |
No, it won’t Mr. Chiles. But my point is merely that they rounded every pup up into that schoolhouse because they fancied that everyone should think and talk the same free-thinkin’ way they do with no regard to station, custom, propriety. And that is why they will win. Because they believe everyone should live and think just like them. |
This dialogue is a distillation of the philosophical differences between the Northerners and the Southerners in the Civil War, and presents a fair-minded view of why the war was fought.
The Historical Background and Plot
The storyline of Ride with the Devil represents in some ways a departure for Ang Lee from the more accessible topics he had previously chosen to direct—yet in other ways, it is a continuity. The typical Ang Lee film is in no way typical—he has covered everything from 1970s post-Vietnam, post-Watergate American suburbia to the conservative, subtle Chinese world of Qing dynasty martial artists. The subject matter of the film Ride with the Devil proved in many ways too remote to win a popular following in Hollywood. The world of the American Civil War is far removed from the average person’s daily experience—this film upped the ante by placing its focus on a period even less accessible, a topic even less familiar, a subject that was clouded in controversy for historians and completely unknown to the average moviegoer. The plot concerns a band of Southerners in the Confederacy, neighbors along the Missouri/Kansas border, who fight a bloody feud to defend themselves against the aggressions of the North. These young guerilla fighters, also known as Southern Bushwhackers, draw together as they experience the violence of war, and the loneliness and longing for love and companionship. Of course, one of the most compelling aspects of the film is its focus on the issue of racial discrimination. Interestingly, it is none other than the first-generation American Jake Roedel who begins to see the light on this issue. It is in the relationship between Roedel and the black servant Daniel Holt that the poignancy of the film is realized. And, indeed, this was the focal point for Ang Lee and James Schamus, who wished to explore the topic of racial discrimination from a fresh angle.
Such a topic does not lend itself readily to promotion; the film was badly advertised and it can be argued that the publicity team for Universal Pictures did, in fact, misunderstand the film themselves. In Taiwan, the film was first advertised at Warner Village in Taipei, a multiplex that normally runs only films that meet the qualifications of a blockbuster. A large, attractive poster advertised a film called Ride with the Devil by Ang Lee. The mysterious title seemed to suggest something new and altogether scandalous. What kind of story would this be? Would it be a ghost story? A horror movie? Would it be a love story, like Gone With the Wind? Certainly it dealt with the same historical period, and the large image of a man and woman passionately embracing—the woman’s breastbone heaving with desire, her wispy dress falling away dangerously—superimposed over an image of desperate figures of soldiers on galloping horses, seemed to suggest none other than a Gone With the Wind remake. So what was Ang Lee up to now? It was confusing, it was mystifying, it was exciting, it was certain not to disappoint.
For the average moviegoer, the film itself seems to renege on some of the poster’s promises. For example, the pace of the film is remarkably slow and has drawn the film’s heaviest criticism. The film runs for three hours, and much of this is meandering, quiet screen-time. For the contemporary youthful audience, this might seem an eternity. As James Gleick points out in Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, “Our computers, our movies, our sex lives, our prayers—they all run faster now than ever before … and the more we fill our lives with time-saving devices and time-saving strategies, the more rushed we feel.”3 Those who understand the technique of Ang Lee will realize that he aims to do a convincing job of portraying the unhurried nature of time in the nineteenth century, as well as the intolerable and mind-numbing boredom of war. Scenes around the periphery of the soldier’s camp show how similar these small-scale skirmishes were to contemporary gang streetfights. The film slows almost to a halt as the original little band of friends hides out in a cave for the winter. The slowing of time is, for Ang Lee, a touch of nineteenth-century realism. He takes his time with the pacing, even giving the viewer glimpses that border on the poetic. In one scene, Jake steps out onto the porch on a frosty winter night and gazes up at the moon. Under Lee’s lyrical direction, the camera holds Jake’s view of the moon in its lens for a full minute. It is a deeply moving scene—a young teenager in a no-win situation wondering if he will ever find peace and security again in his life. But, of course, that is Ang Lee’s territory—displaying heartrending beauty in the midst of cold pain. Lee chose to film on location in the western territory of the state of Missouri, and to schedule shooting during each of the four seasons for an authentic look. Missourians cannot fail to notice the hardwoods, rolling hills, and tall grasses of the authentic American central states.
While many critics take Ride with the Devil’s three-hour running time as the cause of its commercial failure, there was clearly no effort on the part of Universal Pictures to promote the film, which nearly guaranteed its quick demise. One critic summarized the situation as follows: “After an early release in mid-December to sixty theatres nationwide, Universal Pictures in early January cancelled the main release of Ride with the Devil and sent it straight to video production. Studios rarely do this unless attendance at the film is very low and/or the critics savage the movie, neither of which was the case with Lee’s film. Universal Pictures would not give a reason for their decision.”4 A brief explanation from Ang Lee in a later interview was “[October Films] dumped the movie”;5 he indicated it was because of poor test screenings. As a result of this experience, Lee no longer allows his films to be test screened.6 James Schamus also noted the studio’s mishandling of the film, commenting that the DVD version of Ride with the Devil was released without African-American actor Jeffrey Wright, one of the main protagonists of the film and central to the story, appearing on the cover. Internet sites also mistakenly listed Ride with the Devil as a “porno film.” When Schamus and Lee contacted Universal to have this categorization of the film corrected, the studio did nothing.7 Ultimately, Schamus commiserated with Lee over a scotch in a New York bar, saying with light humor: “The Wedding Banquet was the most proportionately profitable movie of 1993, and this one is the most proportionately unprofitable movie of 1999.”8 The film was more popular in England where it enjoyed a big launch prior to the U.S. release. The film played in 300 theaters and was overwhelmingly praised by British critics.9
The title of this film, Ride with the Devil, is an interesting phrase to reflect the demonization of the Southern/Confederate side in Civil War history—the viewer of this film is asked to sympathize with the “wrong” side. The question often posed of the Southern side is “How could they have been fighting to preserve slavery?” However, the Civil War, as this film shows, was not only about slavery and abolitionism (such as that depicted in the 1982 miniseries The Blue and the Gray). Such a simplistic definition of the two opposing sides and their motivation for fighting could not capture the complex ambiguities of the war. Rather, Ride with the Devil demonstrates how many were caught up in the maelstrom of the Civil War: neighbor taking up arms against neighbor simply because an army had invaded their home and forced the inhabitants to take sides. Civil War movies also tend to gloss over the history of the war in the West, where many of the men who fought in the war had no particular loyalty to the side on which they served. Historically, it is known that many people in the West switched sides at necessary intervals to preserve their lives or protect their families. The character of Jake Roedel accurately displays this ambiguity; he openly demonstrates his motivations for fighting. On the one hand, he is merely trying to stay alive; on the other, he yearns to enhance his status in the eyes of his neighbors who have discriminated against his ethnic background (German) as an outsider. However, the film does not “side” with its characters—instead it presents them with the struggles and ambiguities of real life and does not attempt to persuade the viewer to believe one side is “right” and the other “wrong.”
The title Ride with the Devil also reflects the horror and violence of the Civil War. This film does not skimp on violence; on the contrary, it is by far the most violent of any of the films of Ang Lee. The violence is not typical of an action movie, however, because it is not at all gratuitous. It is violence that is at once vicious and deeply affecting, which makes sense because the Civil War—as was made plain by the later film Cold Mountain (2003)—was one of the most horrifically violent wars in human history. However, while the violence of Cold Mountain seems designed for shock value and manipulative of the audience’s emotions, the battles and skirmishes in Ride with the Devil seem very real and personal, necessary to reveal the psychological development of Roedel’s character. The pace of the film—with its sudden action sequences followed by long stretches of little or no action—is also an accurate refection of combat situations, especially in guerilla warfare. In any war, the pace will follow a version of this general pattern: moments of intense violence alternating with weeks or months of extreme boredom and repetitive training in relative calm. Ride with the Devil accurately depicts not only the psychological detail but the costumes/uniforms, weaponry, fighting tactics, and living conditions of the Civil War, especially in the West. One outstanding historical detail was the upturned “US” belt buckle in the scene where Jake and Jack Bull take revenge for the massacre of the latter’s family. In addition, a great amount of historical research had gone into the scene involving the raid on Lawrence, Kansas, when the Southern Bushwhackers are ordered by their general, Quantrill (John Ales), that no lives should be spared. This scene in the film is based on the authentic speech given to the Bushwhackers to convince them to carry out this horrific attack.
The Cast
Ride with the Devil has a far more sprawling setting than Ang Lee’s earlier dramas Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm, but this movie’s characters are no less finely drawn and the director imbues each with color and depth. In this film, Lee again returns to using his stalwart male lead, Tobey Maguire. Already Maguire had proved himself, while still a young teenager, in Lee’s earlier film, The Ice Storm, where he played the lead and central core of the film. Here, Maguire takes on an even greater challenge, operating within a distant and remote context of nineteenth-century history. His performance is again superb. The cast also includes a startlingly good Skeet Ulrich as Jack Bull Chiles. In another surprising turn, Ang Lee cast a recently acclaimed pop singer, Jewel Kilcher, as the young female lead, the widow Sue Lee. While it is uncertain what factors led to her being cast, her presence in the movie was no doubt thought to raise its appeal especially for young people following the trends of pop music. (Casting pop stars in films is certainly more common practice in Asia; examples are Hong Kong’s Anita Mui and The Wedding Banquet’s May Chin, megastars with pop music careers as well as film leads.) Kilcher’s performance has been widely praised by critics, who considered her amazingly intuitive as an actress; her open face and childlike beauty perfectly suited the role.
Jeffrey Wright takes another main role as Daniel Holt, a black man caught up in the fighting for the South—this controversial position becomes a central contradiction in the film. Wright turns in the best performance as a freed slave who takes up the cause of the South in loyalty to fight alongside the man who freed him. As time goes on and the war becomes more bloody and brutal, this quiet, sensitive man begins to realize that even loyalty has its limits in the face of overwhelming wrongdoing. For Lee, Jeffrey Wright’s role was a pivotal one for the film; it provided him with the opportunity to explore the familiar topic of the outsider caught in circumstances through no fault of his own that alienate and distance him from society. Wright gives a nuanced and delicate performance (in his early appearances in the film, his hat is drawn down deeply over his forehead and his eyes are lowered in a world-weary deference to social mores). Only as time goes on does Wright slowly add a guarded warmth and humanity to his character, demonstrating the ingrained and implacable social barriers faced by a man in his circumstances.
Ang Lee’s knack for selecting up-and-coming actors is clearly apparent in this film; for example, Mark Ruffalo appears in a bit part as the traitorious Alf Bowden. The cast further includes a viciously brooding Jim Caviezel, in one of the best and most intense supporting roles, as Black John. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is also supremely petulant and abhorrent as Mackeson. The director’s selection of Ruffalo, Caviezel, and Rhys Meyers predates many of these actors’ larger roles and successes: Ride with the Devil is populated with young male actors who later went on to take leading roles in subsequent films.
The Denouement
The ending of the film provides a challenge for the audience—a satisfying image that is also a conundrum. The friendship between the young white soldier and the older black man has grown into a true, brotherly love. With no further sign of discrimination, the two are equals. And yet, this is an impossibility at that time and in that place. Thus, the film is forced to make an odd choice at the end, leaving the viewer with an unresolved sense of ambivalence. The final scene is one of farewell between the two men, and the last image is one of the freed black man, riding quickly away through a beautiful open prairie to an uncertain future. One is supposed to be left with a sense of hope—and it is indeed a hopeful and optimistic image of American freedom—but perhaps not a realistic one. Left with no companions, black or white, the man is most certainly free to enjoy his independence. However, when he is again in the company of men, what kind of future will he face? This scene can be compared, in its complexity, with the closing scene from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In that film, the closing image was of the young, brilliant martial artist hurling herself off a bridge to atone for past wrongs, and, simultaneously, to make her unspoken wishes come true. The conundrum was that the audience was never allowed to know what happened when she hit the ground. After showing the beautiful, liberated image of a woman flying through the air, the film faded to black. Whether the girl miraculously lived and was granted the desires of her heart, or whether her death was a tragic sacrifice to atone for her mistakes, the audience could never be certain; instead, Lee leaves his audience with a titillating question.
Conclusion
Ride with the Devil is delightfully satisfying, with its slow and pleasant pace, its rich and evocative setting, and its historical and cultural significance. The film is very compelling, and the band of young protagonists continues to hold its appeal. It is a finely-crafted movie that reminds the viewer of the power of film to bring the truth to life when it is made with the care and skill it deserves. The film brings to the audience a fascinating chapter of North/South history in the United States during the Civil War era, and it presents the Southern side of the war with greater sympathy and comprehension than has been attempted in the past. Ang Lee and James Schamus raise fascinating questions—about race, class, and cultural values—with this film. In addition, Lee once again displays the knack for presenting peaceful and pastoral scenes that serve as a background for the turmoil that his characters are experiencing. It is this sense of internal peace that they are striving for, and as the movie develops, the viewer yearns to see the characters attain it.
The genre of the western is often associated with the conflicts of civilization and progress, of the making of masculinity, of the lure and freedom of the West, the myth of leaving one’s past. Ang Lee invokes this myth, but, using race, subverts it. Daniel Holt starts the film a minor, unreadable figure, head bowed and silent, demonstrating the shadow cast by his former enslavement. But as the violence increases and the Southern/western codes are found wanting, he stands up straight and grows in dignity as his role increases in importance. At the end of the film, all the dreams of the western—of freedom, progress, and journeying alone into the great unknown—are given to Holt; conversely Roedel’s character, like the Easterners in old westerns, is stuck with a wife and child, reduced in his independence and his “manhood.” Holt rides off into the distance, the wide-open spaces representing the hope and possibility of a better future, heroic and truly “free.” And yet, even this is given an ironic twist in the film: his quest is his disrupted past—he looks for his mother, another quest that reveals deeper levels of meaning obscured by the traditional western.