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In the 1997 drama titled "Ulee's Gold", Peter Fonda plays a lone beekeeper with persistent lameness, gruff behavior and regrets of a lifetime. Almost everyone in his small Florida town knows the troubles he has seen, but for the viewer who meets him for the first time, Ulee Jackson will be first a mystery. He is a strong and reliable family man – "an old-fashioned type of tie," as another half-mocking, half-admiring character puts it, but there is much more to him and his life than to say. We can not draw. his solemn expression without fault.
Throughout this patient, moving film of the screenwriter-director Victor Nuñez, the multitudes contained in this expression will be progressively exposed. Ulee's face is that of a veteran from Vietnam, a grieving widower and a surprisingly clever tactician in the face of a death or death situation. As more than one classic Hollywood lover has noticed at the time, it is also, visibly and undeniably, the face of Henry Fonda's son – an association that could have distracted from this silent and immense performance instead of lending it to an even richer stranger. emotional dimension.
At the height of his popularity, Henry Fonda was a Hollywood avatar loved by modesty and dignity. He was our Tom Joad in "Grapes of Wrath" and he was also one of the few lonely men willing to tell the truth to power in "12 Angry Men" and "The Ox-Bow Incident". Peter Fonda, who died Friday at age 79, has done nothing so iconic heroic in "Ulee's Gold". But, investing in Ulee with taciturn eloquence, unwavering determination, and an ability to show both vulnerability and courage in the face of danger, he seemed possessed by his father's mind in a way that he had never tried or succeeded on the screen.
The elegiac echoes of "On Golden Pond" aside, it was a performance that went beyond mere mimicry or homage. (It should be noted however that Henry Fonda was an experienced beekeeper and that he had already starred in a disaster film about a bee killer in 1978 and titled "The Swarm.") Story told in "Ulee's Gold" is that of a man whose dedication to his craft is easy and intuitive, but whose commitment to his family is difficult and complicated. His love for his granddaughters and his son, who is in prison for robbery, is a love that is dear to him and expressed not by gentle feelings, but by frank and decisive action. In the manner of Fonda at the time and no longer poignant at the moment, the show was seen as an act of reconciliation – an attempt to make sense of an emotionally distant father who has long cast a shadow about his childhood and his career.
"Ulee's Gold" was hailed by critics from the Fonda and the industry, including a Golden Globe win and an Academy Award nomination for the lead actor. He lost the Oscar in favor of Jack Nicholson, with whom he had appeared almost 30 years earlier in "Easy Rider," which Fonda also co-wrote and produced. In this classic of the 1969 social and film revolt, Fonda and Dennis Hopper were not content to play motorcyclists who trafficked cocaine across a rapidly changing America. Both having been
forged in Roger Corman's B-film cauldron (which has produced several Fonda vehicles, including "The Trip" and "The Wild Angels"), they have become poster artists for a rapidly evolving American film industry, opening a new era of aesthetics. agitation and creative vitality.
The descendant of a prominent Hollywood family thus became a lean and hairy icon of countercultural rebellion, an example of a newer and more nervous Hollywood that would drive out the cracked and dull spirit of old man. This story was not fully realized, of course. The 70s may still be the richest decade in the history of American cinema, but the public has not lost its fondness for the golden age of the Hollywood studio system and the many glories, including several movies from Henry Fonda, whom he committed to celluloid.
Despite the resounding success of "Easy Rider", Fonda's outlaw image does not always attract him. He took some admirably adventurous initiatives on his part, notably by making the 1971 Western film "The Hired Hand", the first of a series of films that associated him on screen with Warren Oates. Lyrical and contemplative, he remains as independent of spirit as any American film, and constitutes a rare western of the time when the questions of feminism and family devotion, embodied by Verna Bloom in the role of the separated wife of Fonda, are more than just a reflection after the fact.
Fonda's subsequent work as an actor was often erratic, full of roles in horror and action movies that exploited his biker image but was rarely linked to an audience or critics. The success that greeted her older sister, Jane, even with her own moments of controversy in the honor, largely escaped her. Only until "Ulee's Gold", nearly three decades after "Easy Rider", does he really find his foot as an interpreter. This triumph caused a late rise, the best of which may have been his turn as a perfectly corrupt record producer in Steven Soderbergh's 1999 film "The Limey".
But Fonda's signature is memorable for reasons that go beyond the recognition and goodwill she has earned, and even beyond the poignant echoes of her father's legacy. This persists because of the way Ulee Jackson scrapes honey from a hive frame, his skillfulness and his absolute pride that he clearly takes in his work and the feeling that he prefers the company of his bees to that of someone else. This lasts because of the way Fonda often seems broken beyond the ability to express tears, from the way he can flood sensations with a single line of dialogue spared.
"I'm just exhausted," says Ulee. It is an appropriate blessing for an actor who has invested in his work and for a character whose exhaustion was proof of his humanity.
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