(Katy Jurado)


fine, elegiac Charles Taylor on the new Peckinpah box--

"None is more affecting than Slim Pickens in what is perhaps the finest scene Peckinpah ever filmed. Gut-shot in a raid on Billy's hideout, Pickens' sheriff, Colin Baker, wanders off into the distance as Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door" plays on the soundtrack. Following at a distance, his wife (Katy Jurado) is unable to bring herself to intrude on his final moments. As Pickens sits on a rock, he exchanges a fond look with her, but his eyes seem made anew, as if only in this dimming moment could they take in all the wonders of the world. What he sees--the darkening sky, the slowly rushing river in front of him--has the effect of life slipping through his fingers. This exquisitely lyrical sequence, maybe the screen's finest image of the passage into death, is one Peckinpah had been working toward since Ride the High Country. The respectful remove from which Katy Jurado watches her beloved husband die is the same distance from which Peckinpah had long given witness to the deaths of his aging heroes--not close enough to deprive them of their dignity, but close enough to make us feel the holes in the world where they were."