Ride with the Devil

I just got back from seeing "Ride with the Devil," and I still haven't caught my breath yet. It's a little on the long side, but somehow you don't mind because you grow very attached to the characters. I live in Kansas City, so we heard a lot about the filming last year, but it really struck me to hear characters talking about places and acting out events I've heard about my entire life.

One thing that really struck me was the harsh violence. The reviewer in the local paper said it reminded him of news reports about Bosnia. Watching this film, you get a real feel for the harshness, the unpredictability of warfare and how it changes the characters. Highly, highly recommended.

As someone interested in 19th century American history I had to get this movie on DVD. It took forever to arrive but was well worth the wait..... I think. The qualification is added because I found it ... odd. Appparently accurate, literate, well acted but most of all unpredictable. I shall resist the temptation to write "spoilers" but suffice it to say there were more obvious "Hollywood" ways of dealing with many of the plot twists. Put another way, this movie is very well written. As "Gods and Generals" dealt with this horrible war at the level of general officers, this movie deals with it at the level of privates and irregulars. Is it too much of a soap opera? Not really. Is it unsatisfying in its dealing with evil? No, but it is unexpected. Is this a great movie? I don't know, but it is a good one.

I've watched this movie twice now on DVD, and both times it didn't fail to impress me with its unique impartial attitude. It seems more like a depiction of reality than most other Hollywood fare, especially on a topic that is still hotly discussed. Even though it sticks closely with the southern viewpoint, it doesn't fail to question it, and in the end the only sentence passed is that the war is lost, not matter what, and cruelty is a common denominator.

What really makes this movie outstanding is the refusal to over-dramatize. Nowadays truly good movies (in a nutshell) are few and far apart, with mainstream fare being enjoyable (if you don't have high expectations), but terribly commercially spirited. I think this movie comes off as a truly good movie (without being a masterpiece), because it sticks to itself, and gives the viewer a chance to watch and analyze it, instead of wanting to bombard him with effect and emotion to blot out his intelligence. This movie is cool, observant, and generally light-handed in its judgement, which is GOOD.

The story has its flaws, especially Jewel's Character comes off doubtfully, but then again the situation at the time was so chaotic, that for a young widow it might have been only logical to somehow get back into a normal life, even by liberally taking each next guy. Still she doesn't come off as weak, in fact I think she's one of the stronger characters, she's always in control of the relationships, with the men just tagging. And I take it very gratefully that she's not a weeping widow. I believe in the 19th century death of a loved one was something a lot more normal than now. You could die so easily of even minor illnesses and injuries, so the prospect of of someone dying, while surely causing grief, didn't traumatise people like it does now. People didn't seem to build shrines about their lost ones like they do now, and I like that attitude.

My recommendation is for intelligent people to watch this movie, if they are in the mood for something different than the usual hollywood fare. Don't watch if if you want non-stop action or heart-renting emotion.

Taiwanese director Ang Lee, whose previous films include 'Sense and Sensibility' and 'The Ice Storm', turned to the American Civil War for his latest feature. Based on a novel by Daniel Woodrell, it follows the exploits of a group of Southern guerrillas, known as bushwhackers, as they fight their Northern equivalents, the jayhawkers in the backwater of Missouri.

As one might expect, there is plenty of visceral action, but the focus is on the tension that the war put on the young men who fought it - many of whom were fighting against their former neighbours and even family. Jake Roedel (Tobey Maguire) is such a man, or rather, boy, as he is only seventeen when the war reaches Missouri. He is the son of a German immigrant, but instead of following his countrymen and becoming a Unionist, he joins his lifelong friend Jack Bull Chiles (Skeet Ulrich) and rides with the bushwhackers. Despite a lack of acceptance because of his ancestry and an unwillingness to participate in the murder of unarmed Union men, he remains loyal to the cause. So does his friend Daniel Holt (Jeffrey Wright), a black slave freed by another bushwhacker and so fighting for the South.

Lee handles the subject with aplomb, never rushing the deep introspection that the plot demands in favour of action and this lends the film a sense of the reality of war - long periods of boredom and waiting interposed with occasional flashes of intensely terrifying fighting. The action is unglamorised and admirably candid, recognising that both sides committed a great number of atrocities.

The performances are superb, with Maguire and Wright both courageous and dignified. Up-and-coming Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers is particularly chilling as a cold-blooded killer, while Skeet Ulrich is enjoyably suave and arrogant. Lee never flinches from the reality of war, but his actors do an admirable job of showing the good that comes from it - the growth of friendship, the demonstration of courage and, on a wider scale, the emancipation of oppressed peoples. Ride With the Devil is a beautiful and deeply compassionate film that regularly shocks but always moves the audience.

My great-grandfather J.W. Daugherty was a very young teenager during the civil war in Missouri. While still twelve he was put to work as a mule-skinner by one of the "black-flag" bands of bushwackers around Cedar County, in southern Missouri. He later mastered the use of the six-shooter, and rode with Quantrill. He claimed to have ridden with Jesse and Frank James during and after the war, but every man of his generation made the same claim. Were all the claims true, it would probably be about fifty thousand in all who rode with the James boys.

J.W. claimed not to have been present during the burning of Lawrence, but so did everybody else. With so many thousand occupied in riding with the brothers James, it is passing strange that so few managed to be present during the actual burning of Lawrence, the single most important action of the Quantrill band.

I am, incidentally, named after Lawrence, that appellation being my first name.

J.W. claimed it was the James brothers who invented the idea of gripping the reins in their teeth while firing both revolvers, thereby availing oneself of a full twelve rounds in flight. J.W. ended up being the champion fiddler of Missouri, losing that title only when jealous rivals shut him out of the fiddling contests because he could read music.

Another great-grandfather of mine was James Quinn, a young captain of the Union calvery. This was a Missouri militia unit, but militias on the border often saw more action that regular units back east. His job was to guard the railroads from the "highway agents" who even then were perfecting the feat of robbing the trains of yankee gold sent south for payroll.

James and J.W. were supposed to have been on opposite sides during the Battle of Wilson's Creek, but it is impossible to know for sure. I have copies of Union orders for Captain James Quinn, having to do with the bandits operating in southern Missouri.

This film, RIDE WITH THE DEVIL, is one of the truly great American films, and the only one that even begins to get close to the feeling of the border wars, the bushwacking, the betrayals, and the split families. In Missouri, the Civil War was hell on earth, breaking every family apart at least once.

Toby McGuire is overwhelming in his grasp of the teenage border warrior who has known nothing else but killing, and who finally decides to make a new life in California. Jewel is astonishing as the young survivor widowed twice, but full of life and a desire to live it to the fullest.

The historical details are almost always spot on, and the faces of the men and women are disturbingly like what they must have been in those terrible days.

But finally, it is the script that is almost unbelievable in its power. Even when one or two words are wrong, the scriptwriter manages to somehow capture the mood and the rhythms of 19th-century speech in that part of the country, in all its humor and deep fatalism and courtesy--and yes, its cruelty too.

This is the first work of art that made me feel something close to what my great-grandfathers must have gone through. They left many stories and written records behind, but such autobiographies conceal as much as they reveal, especially about the violence and its traumatizing effects of the young males who experienced it.

I am grateful to the makers of this film, the script-writer, the author of the original book WOE TO LIVE ON, the actors and others who created RIDE WITH THE DEVIL and somehow managed to make it such a stunning work of art. To them I am thankful for bringing me closer to ancestors who made me what I am; and who--for better or worse--made this country what it is.

Lawrence Swaim