Back To Index Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
 Barnes & Noble The Wild Bunch may be Sam Peckinpahs all-around greatest film, but this looser, moodier elegy to the dying frontier is his most poetic. The film employs an emblematic Old West storyline: Outlaw-turned-sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn) must hunt down and capture his old partner in crime, the legendary Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson). Bob Dylan supplied the haunting soundtrack, and his songs work with Peckinpahs starkly beautiful images of the Mexican landscape -- all harsh sunlight filtered through desert dust -- to create an atmosphere that lingers long after the movie ends. Like McCabe and Mrs. Miller, also made in the early 1970s, Pat Garret is as much a lament for the passing of the 60s counterculture as it is for the Old West. The outlaw Billy represents youth and freedom from the Establishment: In the films romanticized worldview, maturity equals imprisonment and/or death. As Billy, the handsome, slightly puffy Kristofferson is the films weak link; still making the transition, at that point, from folk singer to screen actor, he lacks the edginess to convincingly embody such an icon. But Coburn, the lean and silver-haired Western veteran, is superb, projecting an aura of melancholy and regret that infuses the entire film. The onscreen presense of Dylan, playing an elfin, enigmatic character called Alias, is nothing more than set dressing, but his songs supply an omniscient voice that articulates emotions and ideas that the taciturn characters cant. The films most moving passage is the wordless scene in which a sheriff, played by Slim Pickens, expires on the banks of a river to the hymnlike strains of "Knockin on Heavens Door" as High Noons Katy Jurado watches in tears. The last of Peckinpahs westerns, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid was his poignant and lyrical farewell to the genre he helped revise Kryssa Schemmerling Interested in the song lyrics? - Check out themostlyrics.com! Looking For A DVD? - Check out dvd-a-rama.com! |
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