`RIDE' ON; TAIWANESE DIRECTOR EXAMINES CULTURAL SHIFTS DURING THE U.S. CIVIL WAR.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

Taiwanese director Ang Lee has never been one to shy away from looking at other cultures in his films. He examined the emptiness of the sexual revolution in 1970s suburban America in ``The Ice Storm'' and the confining constraints of Jane Austen's England in ``Sense and Sensibility.'' In his latest film, ``Ride With the Devil,'' Lee tackles his biggest challenge to date: the American Civil War. For a director who had never made a movie about people with dirty fingernails, it was a radical shift in material.

And yet, even with its battle scenes and horseback chases, ``Ride With the Devil'' doesn't veer far from the territory that Lee has staked out in all of his work. He is still obsessed with people's humanity and how character is tested during moments of change.

``That's what's important about Ang's films,'' says Lee's writing and producing partner James Schamus. ``No matter what language they speak, they are about people relating to each other.''

Those relations are a little less civil than usual in ``Ride With the Devil.'' Adapted from Daniel Woodrell's novel, ``Woe to Live On,'' the film tells the story of a group of Southern Bushwackers engaged in guerrilla warfare along the Kansas-Missouri border. Confronting an encroaching Union army and the fear of losing the only way of life they have ever known, the group of young Southerners struggle to come of age in the worst possible time in American history.

For Lee, who grew up in Taiwan among older people who complained that their nation was becoming ``Americanized,'' the Civil War represents the beginning to today's world of democracy and capitalism.

``The Yankees not only won territory, but a victory for a whole way of life and thinking,'' Lee says. ``It changed everyone. Everyone won the right to fulfill themselves. This is the Yankee principle. As a Taiwanese, I can identify with the Southerners who looked on as the Yankees change their way of life forever. But at the same time, I identify even more strongly with the outsiders like the slaves who grasp and fight for their freedom.''

Adds Schamus: ``In many ways the book and the movie are post-Vietnam rewrites of `Huckleberry Finn.' The book, written from the point of view of a white Southerner, was, at the same time, liberating, focusing on the emancipation of all people in the South.''

The film focuses on three outsiders: a young German immigrant, a shy woman and a slave fighting for the Southerners. For the part of the sweet, Southern belle, Lee and Schamus rolled the dice and cast folk-pop singer Jewel in her first movie role.

With most other directors, the move would smack of stunt casting, but Lee was looking for a fresh face and a woman who could convey honesty and a lack of pretension. And Jewel's childhood made her seem ideal for a character living in what was then the American frontier.

``She grew up in Alaska, lived in a car and rode horses,'' Schamus says. ``She's articulate, independent and intelligent. She is the character. But that made it difficult for her, too, because she had to find some way to make Sue Lee different from Jewel.''

Actually, for Jewel, character development was the easy part. It was the technical aspects of acting - basic things like hitting a mark - that threw her for a loop and prompted her to call Lee after two days of filming to say, ``I think you made a bad decision.''

``What can I say? I sucked,'' Jewel says. ``There's nothing like a good old sucking to teach you a little humility. I had spent a fair amount of time with Ang preparing for acting, but we never covered the technical things. So I thought hitting the mark was like I was supposed to hit some emotional mark for my character, you know? Let's just say there was a huge learning curve.''

Says Tobey Maguire, who plays the movie's central character, the young German immigrant: ``Having worked with Ang before (he starred in Lee's last film, `The Ice Storm'), I trust him 100 percent. So when he said he was casting Jewel, I figured he knew what he was doing. During those first couple of weeks, though, I had my moments of doubt. But as the days went on, I was impressed. She took a great challenge for her first job and she did great.''

Lee, famous for giving his actors thick syllabuses during pre-production, made sure Jewel and her castmates were completely prepared. Required reading for ``Ride With the Devil'' included Stephen Crane's ``The Red Badge of Courage,'' Mark Twain's ``The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,'' biographies of Southern Bushwackers, scholarly studies of slavery, Frederick Douglas' ``Narrative'' and Sir Walter Scott's ``Waverly,'' a chivalric novel popular among Southern men of the period.

The voluminous background was essential, says Tony Award-winning actor Jeffrey Wright, who plays the slave Daniel Holt. Before making ``Ride With the Devil,'' Wright says he would assume the rare stories of slaves fighting for the South were just propaganda concocted by the Confederacy. But there are a number of documented stories about blacks who fought side-by-side with their owners. The reasons were many, Schamus says.

``Some wanted to prove to white Southerners that blacks could be as loyal and trustworthy as whites, in the hope that after the war, if the South won, the treatment of blacks would improve,'' Schamus says. ``Some were fiercely loyal to their owners. Some saw fighting as a welcome relief from the drudgery of plantation life. And probably for most, fighting on the lines meant being closer to the North - and that much closer to freedom.''

Wright's slave is just one of the movie's main characters looking for freedom. After several campaigns with the Bushwackers, Maguire's immigrant grows weary of the bloodshed and longs to escape. And Jewel's Sue Lee faces loss upon loss and seeks a simple, safe harbor away from the brutality.

``It's a film about emancipation - for blacks and whites,'' Wright says. ``It's about emancipation from injustice. And I think that theme still resonates strongly today.''

Wright says he is disappointed that African-American audiences typically shy away from films dealing with slavery. (``Beloved'' was the most recent example.) He calls ``Ride With the Devil'' a ``movie that had to be done.''

``We blacks still have to emancipate ourselves from certain resonances of our slave history,'' Wright says. ``To ignore that history is dangerous and disempowering. We need to recognize the bitterness of the struggle and the glory of our triumph. If you do that and tap into that power, then you, as a race, live on.''

Likewise, while Lee and Schamus aren't out to give moviegoers a history lesson with their movie, they do see the Civil War period as a key turning point in world history.

``People always ask me, `How is American culture winning in Taiwan?' '' Lee says. ``And the answer is, they get to the kids and they promise them freedom. And it's a freedom and at the same time a subjugation. And it's a subjugation worth fighting sometimes.

``That's what people in this film are doing. A Yankee invasion is threatening the Southerners' way of life and the things they stood for. Yet, at the same time, that invasion brought with it principles like emancipation.

``What's interesting is that even as America seems to conquer the world with the promise of freedom, it still hasn't fully conquered itself or achieved true freedom for all of its people. It's that ongoing struggle that we set out to express in this film.''

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3 Photos

Photo: (1 -- cover -- color) Tobey Maguire, left, and Skeet Ulrich in ``Ride With the Devil''

(2) Skeet Ulrich, left, Jewel, Tobey Maguire and Jeffrey Wright star in Ang Lee's new Civil War drama, ``Ride With the Devil.''

(3) Director Ang Lee, left, on the set with Skeet Ulrich, explores the issues of humanity and tests of character.