I think the American West really attracts me because it's

“I think the American West really attracts me because it’s romantic. The desert, the empty space, the drama.” Thus speaks Ang Lee, visionary of cinema, whose eyes are drawn not merely to landscapes of sand and stone but to the eternal stage of human longing they represent. In his words, the American West is not geography alone, but symbol and myth, a canvas upon which dreams, losses, and heroic struggles are painted in colors of fire and silence. It is romantic because it captures the heart’s hunger for freedom, danger, and beauty unbound.

The desert, to Lee, is no barren wasteland but a realm of purity. In its vastness, one feels both the smallness of the self and the enormity of existence. The desert strips life of its excess, leaving only the essentials—heat, stone, sky, endurance. For the lover of the romantic, such a place awakens awe and terror together. To walk through it is to walk through the soul itself, emptied of distraction, filled only with the echoes of eternity.

And what of the empty space? The West is defined by horizons that seem never to end, by valleys where silence reigns, by skies so immense they press upon the spirit. Empty space is not void, but possibility. It is where the imagination takes flight, where every traveler writes their own destiny upon the earth. The ancients would have called such space sacred, for it grants the human being both solitude and vision. Here, one is forced to confront one’s self, to learn who they truly are without the clamor of the crowd.

The drama of the West, as Lee names it, is born from contrast. Life there is both fragile and fierce, each survival hard-won, each failure absolute. The cowboys who rode under burning suns, the settlers who crossed rivers and mountains, the outlaws and lawmen—all became larger than life because the land itself magnified them. In a gentle place, one may live gently; but in a dramatic land, one must live greatly, or perish. Thus, the stories of the West have always rung with romance, not because they were easy, but because they were perilous, passionate, and unforgettable.

History gives us endless echoes of this truth. Think of the Oregon Trail, where men, women, and children left all behind to seek a new life in the vast unknown. Many perished, yet their courage remains the stuff of legend. Or recall the Apache and Comanche warriors, whose lives were bound to the desert and plains, whose survival in such harshness turned them into figures of awe. Their struggles were not small—they were epic, and the land itself gave them that scale.

Ang Lee’s attraction to this vision of the West is not mere aesthetic; it is spiritual. For the artist, the West is not only background but mirror—it reflects the inner struggles of the heart: desire, loss, love, betrayal, endurance. To call it romantic is to admit that he sees in it the eternal stage for human passion, where emptiness becomes fullness, where silence becomes song, where struggle becomes meaning.

The lesson for us is this: seek your own desert, your own empty space, your own drama. Do not fear the silence, for it teaches you who you are. Do not despise the vastness, for it reminds you of possibility. And do not shrink from the struggle, for in it your story becomes grand. The American West, as Ang Lee saw it, is not only a place on the map but a symbol of the human soul’s longing for freedom, romance, and greatness. To live with such vision is to live as one who dares to see life itself as a vast and untamed frontier.