Scenery has played a major role in Ang Lee's English-language films. In 1995's ''Sense and Sensibility, '' Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet's love lives blossomed within the stone walls of English cottages and lush meadows, while 1997's ''The Ice Storm'' transformed the wintry 1970s American suburbia into a metaphor for bleak family dysfunction.
In his new film, ''Ride With the Devil,'' it's the Midwestern frontier, which gets used in the grandiose, sweeping manner of ''Dances With Wolves'' but
