Most locations are backgrounds. A few are characters.
The difference isn’t about visual interest — plenty of visually arresting locations remain backgrounds throughout a film. The difference is about whether the location can participate in the story.
For The Weight, the Texas panhandle wasn’t a setting. It was a psychological state. The flatness, the scale, the way the horizon goes on longer than seems physically possible — these weren’t decorative. They were the interior experience of the character made visible.
Finding a location that acts requires understanding what the character is feeling, then asking: what place on earth feels like that?