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Continuing his cinematic journey westward, from Taiwan (Eat Drink, Man Woman) through England (Sense and Sensibility) and surburban Connecticut (The Ice Storm), director Ang Lee ventures into America's heartland for his latest project, Ride With the Devil. Set on the Kansas-Missouri border during the Civil War, the drama stars Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich as two young roughriders in a band of Bushwhackers--the legendary six-gun-toting Confederate extremists. This may seem like unlikely material for Lee, whose Zen-like demeanor is more college professor than drill sergeant. But the Civil War, he explains, particularly along the border, was more like the conflicts in Vietnam or Bosnia than like people's perception of "clear-cut issues, uniforms, and generals on horseback. It was a dirty war and very confusing for a young soldier."
Based on Daniel Woodrell's novel Woe to Live On, the story has an emotional complexity that appealed to Lee, who was looking to veer from family dramas while continuing to explore universal human themes. Gradually, within the film's clan of misfits, a tragic love triangle forms of involving the two scrappy soldiers and a young woman (played by singer Jewel, in her acting debut). "I'd become really bored with music," says the 23-year-old folkiee, who recently published a book of poetry and has always planned on acting. (Ex-paramour Sean Penn had even encouraged her to pursue the craft.) "Music is like one limb on a creative body," she says," and the rest of me was beginning to atrophy." Just in time, a casting agent who had seen one of her music videos brought her to Lee's attention. "She looked the part," he says of the Alaska native, who enjoyed cattle-roping on her days off from shooting. "I joke that she's even got period teeth." Nineteenth-century dialect, customs, and etiquette, on the other hand, had to be learned, so Lee organized a three-week training program to familiarize cast members with horses and the period's weapons and everyday household items. Chilly temperatures prevented the cast from camping outdoors--and disrupted the shooting schedule, too. But nothing challenged Lee as much as the filming of the dangerous action scenes. ("I was constantly tortured between, Should I be a better director or should I be a better person?" he says.) Nothing except, perhaps, for his temperamental equine stars. Says Lee, "There's a reason people don't make many westerns." |