Ride With The Devil

There have been many Civil War films, from Gone With The Wind (1939) to The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) to Gettysburg (1993) but Taiwanese-born Ang Lee brings a very different approach to what was an extraordinary moment in American history when the North and South appear to have engaged in an orgy of fratricide.

The story concerns four members of a group of  Missouri “Bushwhackers", a loose amalgam of young anti-Union guerrilla fighters who remained independent of the Confederate Army: good friends Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire) and Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich), Southern gentleman George Clyde (Simon Baker), and his "nigger" Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright), the latter who fights out of loyalty to the man who freed him not because he wants to preserve slavery.

Although the film starts by showing acts of aggression on both sides as it progresses Lee focuses more on the men and their self-perceptions, introducing in a rather too decorative way, a young widow (Jewel) whose presence gradually brings them to an awareness of the futility of their actions. This “feminisation” is very typical of Lee’s work but certainly unusual in conventional American film-making which stays firmly grounded in the male perspective (it would be interesting to know how much of this was in James Schamus' script or Daniel Woodrell's source novel, Woe To Live On).

With the emphasis on the human drama comes, once again characteristic of Lee’s work, a superior visual sensibility. Cinematographer Frederick Elmes, who worked with Lee on The Ice Storm (1997) does a fine in this respect although you’d have to say that these renegades are remarkably well-dressed for men living on the run. Maguire (who also appeared in The Ice Storm and who got the role after Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon passed on it) with his high voice and boyish looks is an odd choice for the lead (he was much better suited to the role of a young assistant to Michael Caine's doctor in The Cider House Rules which was released the same year) and indeed the youthfulness of all the players in including the increasingly sadistic Pitt Mackeson) Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a little disconcerting. But then Lee’s film might be better considered as a coming-of-age drama.

One assumes that there is a good degree of historical accuracy to the film, in particular the division in Missouri between those opposed to slavery, like Jake's Dutch immigrant father, and the defenders of Southern traditions like Jack Chiles's family.  That the clash of values came to such a brutal internecine confrontation is a tragedy which Lee brings home well.

 

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