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Ride with the Devil

[img]http://criterion_production.s3.amazonaws.com/release_images/2662/514_box_348x490_w128.jpg[/img]

With this new director’s cut, Ang Lee reconstructs his original vision for his Civil War epic, Ride with the Devil, an intimate, harrowing look at a country torn in half, told from a daringly unorthodox perspective. Set in 1862, during the Kansas-Missouri border war, the film stars Tobey Maguire as Jake and Skeet Ulrich as his friend Jack Bull; they join the Confederate-sympathizing Bushwhackers after Jack’s father is killed by marauding members of the abolitionist Jayhawkers. But Ride with the Devil is also the story of their unusual ally Holt (an astonishing Jeffrey Wright), who’s fighting for the South despite being a former slave. A rumination on identity and loyalty, both political and personal, Ride with the Devil is a provocative challenge to preconceptions about America’s bloodiest conflict.

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

- New director’s cut of Ride with the Devil, featuring thirteen minutes of added footage
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Ang Lee and director of photography Frederick Elmes (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Two audio commentaries, one featuring Lee and producer-screenwriter James Schamus and one featuring Elmes, sound designer Drew Kunin, and production designer Mark Friedberg
- New video interview with star Jeffrey Wright
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Godfrey Cheshire

Available on DVD and Blu-ray

DVD
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Might as well combine this one with the Fanfan and the Two of Us threads

Thirteen minutes of added footage - hope it is not part of that slow middle section where they are hiding out for the winter. This movie got some bad reviews but it was all over cable for a while and I've seen it several times now and it really grows on you. Period details, ways of speaking, the inability of staying neutral - all very believable to me and resulting in interesting characters and some great action scenes.
Can we call this a western and say now with "The Furies" we got two of 'em - gotta keep moving in the right direction!

Where, pray, are the Jewel supplements?

The bonus feature is that they kept her off the bonus features

Two different commentary tracks seems like a bit much. Besides the commentaries, I am a little surprised by the lack of supplements on this release.

Yeah, I was expecting this to be a stacked double disc like Benjamin Button. A sort of way to justify its presence in the Collection.

(takes an aspirin)

oh dear.

I haven't seen this so.... I will be picking the BD up when it's released. I'm a Civil War buff, so I won't be able to resist. On a side note I had the great pleasure of meeting Mr. Lee when he was right around my block (in extremely rural Berkshire distance) filming the Woodstock movie. And he's a really swell guy.

ianungstad wrote:Two different commentary tracks seems like a bit much. Besides the commentaries, I am a little surprised by the lack of supplements on this release.

I am as well....seemed like the one release that needed some input from the director/cast to help pimp it a bit. I recall liking the movie a lot, and will definitely get the blu ray eventually, but it won't be a must get at all due to the weak extras. i don't really have the time to devote to 1 commentary, let alone 2....very disappointed with this. Oh well....I am still excited to see his expanded cut of this.

and hey, Jewel has a spine #!

HistoryProf wrote: and hey, Jewel has a spine #!

Spiderman has two.

knives wrote:

HistoryProf wrote: and hey, Jewel has a spine #!

Spiderman has two.

Actually, three.

Just to get some discussion started for a film that appears not to have much support, I looked at Trevor McCrisken and Andrew Pepper's American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film, in which they declare Ride with the Devil to be one of the most successful historical films of its era in terms of its evocation not of a particular event (the border wars of Kansas-Missouri) but of the subjective experience of such events. (I taught this book in a graduate public history seminar). Especially in comparison with Hollywood efforts such as Glory or Amistad (straining to convince us of the fidelity to the event and eliminating moral ambiguity) and Cold Mountain (unsure of whether it is about a particular moment in time or about more universal themes inspired by war), they praise the film for an indeterminacy that is of a piece with its late-90s moment (think Balkans, etc.):

"Ride with the Devil speaks, in critical rather than affirmative ways, about a particularly deadening modern preference for politeness, tolerance and order and an equally deadening and alarming need to disrupt, question, and challenge this preference by using nihilistic violence (86)."

More specifically: "Ride with the Devil is less interested in showing us the past, at least in any straightforward, apparently detached way, than in contesting some prevailing assumptions about the meaning of particular historical events by exploring the ways in which personal animosities and irrational hatred shape and inform the broader 'sweep' of history (79)."

Particularly interesting to me are the ways key characters contain opposing worlds within themselves--the white son of a free soiler and a southerner, a black character on the side of the Confederacy, both forced to question their loyalties at regular intervals. I haven't seen this film and admit that as a historian, I'm much more interested in what a film says about the time in which it was made than the time it depicts. So McCrisken and Pepper's work was like catnip to me. But I wonder whether this analysis resonates for others who have seen the film and whether the film's supposed shortcomings are more obviously in the realm of mis-en-scene, direction, editing, acting, whatever. In terms of the script and character development, it intrigues me based on the little I've read of the film.

Thinking about the event depicted though, I'm just a little surprised that they could not have found a historian or two to discuss the American Civil War in the west, the chaos in Kansas and Missouri, the complexity of the slavery issue as it related to the settling of Kansas Territory, etc. in a supplement. This is vitally important for understanding the era and would enrich the understanding of the film. A Boudu style map would be useful too.

knives wrote:

HistoryProf wrote:and hey, Jewel has a spine #!

Spiderman has two.

Heh, if only - the first two Spider-Man films are a hell of a lot better than some of the films that've already made it into the collection. And I don't even like comic books.

scotty2 wrote:Just to get some discussion started for a film that appears not to have much support, I looked at Trevor McCrisken and Andrew Pepper's American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film, in which they declare Ride with the Devil to be one of the most successful historical films of its era in terms of its evocation not of a particular event (the border wars of Kansas-Missouri) but of the subjective experience of such events. (I taught this book in a graduate public history seminar). Especially in comparison with Hollywood efforts such as Glory or Amistad (straining to convince us of the fidelity to the event and eliminating moral ambiguity) and Cold Mountain (unsure of whether it is about a particular moment in time or about more universal themes inspired by war), they praise the film for an indeterminacy that is of a piece with its late-90s moment (think Balkans, etc.):

"Ride with the Devil speaks, in critical rather than affirmative ways, about a particularly deadening modern preference for politeness, tolerance and order and an equally deadening and alarming need to disrupt, question, and challenge this preference by using nihilistic violence (86)."

More specifically: "Ride with the Devil is less interested in showing us the past, at least in any straightforward, apparently detached way, than in contesting some prevailing assumptions about the meaning of particular historical events by exploring the ways in which personal animosities and irrational hatred shape and inform the broader 'sweep' of history (79)."

Particularly interesting to me are the ways key characters contain opposing worlds within themselves--the white son of a free soiler and a southerner, a black character on the side of the Confederacy, both forced to question their loyalties at regular intervals. I haven't seen this film and admit that as a historian, I'm much more interested in what a film says about the time in which it was made than the time it depicts. So McCrisken and Pepper's work was like catnip to me. But I wonder whether this analysis resonates for others who have seen the film and whether the film's supposed shortcomings are more obviously in the realm of mis-en-scene, direction, editing, acting, whatever. In terms of the script and character development, it intrigues me based on the little I've read of the film.

Thinking about the event depicted though, I'm just a little surprised that they could not have found a historian or two to discuss the American Civil War in the west, the chaos in Kansas and Missouri, the complexity of the slavery issue as it related to the settling of Kansas Territory, etc. in a supplement. This is vitally important for understanding the era and would enrich the understanding of the film. A Boudu style map would be useful too.

Nice post! Being a professor if American history myself, that was exactly what hit me as missing here...some kind of doc/making of w/ the cast and some scholars who could comment on the verisimilitude of their roles and the feel of the time - which is the real success of the film. it really does FEEL like the 19th century in a way that's rare in these kind of films. Get James McPherson or someone who has published more specifically on Bleeding Kansas, etc to speak to that aspect and discuss the border wars - where families were torn apart, and it really was often brother vs. brother and the violence was only part of the overall destruction of the communities. A real missed opportunity that could have raised this release of a good but not great film to a great DVD package. I was excited to see what they'd do with this one, and am completely let down here.

I still think people should give it a shot though....as someone who frequently bemoans the lack of quality "period" films, this one is a fantastic evocation of a particularly horrible time and place in American history...that alone makes it worthwhile.

HistoryProf wrote:Jewel has a spine #!

Let's not forget Simon Baker now . I'm glad that the absence of historical context was mentioned because as a history buff and period film fan it's nice to have the historical realities covered. It's also worth mentioning because it may help save the film in some way if this sort of movie isn't your cup of tea. For me, Civil War era movies can be a dime a dozen so Criterion stepping in with a history professor could be a way to distinguish the film for those who'd enjoy it more given better historical context.

I watched this last night and have to say I enjoyed it a lot more this time around, maybe the additional material helping along with the span of 10 years between viewings. They expanded on the massacre sequence, and I noticed the addition of a scene involving a former rebel who lost his leg. The commentary had to point out other sequences for me and I get the suggestion there's been a bit of a reedit overall. Pacing felt better but the middle part is still a bit of a chore. I forgot how wonderful Wright and Baker were in their respective roles, and the relationship between them is fairly complex. Maguire still comes off as Maguire to me on the other hand.

But yes, the lack of historical supplements is a huge disappointment, limiting it to comments by Lee in the commentary and some notes in the booklet. I think they held back on material so they could keep it down to one disc for Blu-ray: the film takes up 40GB of the disc. Not that I think it helped much. I'm actually a little disappointed with the transfer. Colours look incredible (I don't recall greens ever looking so good) but it looks soft and lacks detail. I'm wondering if the technical commentary, which I have yet to listen to, might shed some light on how it was shot, but other than the colours the transfer looks fairly average. It's not a mess like Last Emperor by any means, and it's far better than a DVD transfer, with no digital artifacts that I noticed (of course I missed EE on Playtime) but it just didn't strike me as special. I don't know, I'll have look at it again when I listen to the other commentary. The bitrate remains pretty high, though, at 35mbps through most of it.

Blu-ray and DVD

Tom Hagen wrote:Where, pray, are the Jewel supplements?

They're right there...when she breastfeeds.

I suppose it's part of Lee approach to minimize the drama, to put us in the position of the characters' day to day life rather than underline and overtly impose an overall narrative point of view, but I just find the pacing excruciatingly slow and flat. I suppose the benefit of this is that events sneak up on us as they do the characters without "fanfare", but it just doesn't jell for me. I can't tell if the flat acting style is directed as such or just poor acting. I find it more interesting as a take on historical events than as a work of drama, although something tells me that Jewel's implants aren't quite authentic. :-k

mfunk9786 wrote:

knives wrote:

HistoryProf wrote: and hey, Jewel has a spine #!

Spiderman has two.

Heh, if only - the first two Spider-Man films are a hell of a lot better than some of the films that've already made it into the collection. And I don't even like comic books.

Heh...I think he meant Tobey Maguire has two Criterion titles.

Three - he turns up briefly in Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.

unclehulot wrote:I find it more interesting as a take on historical events than as a work of drama, although something tells me that Jewel's implants aren't quite authentic. :-k

I'm not sure why you would say that. They're real; and they're spectacular.