Appreciation: The key Peter Fonda role isn't 'Easy Rider.' It's 'Ulee's Gold'

In the 1997 drama “Ulee’s Gold,” Peter Fonda plays a lonely beekeeper with a persistent limp, a gruff demeanor and a lifetime’s worth of regrets. Nearly everyone in his small Florida town knows the troubles he’s seen, though for the viewer meeting him for the first time, Ulee Jackson will initially read as something of a mystery.

Over the course of this patient, stirring film from the writer-director Victor Nuñez, the multitudes contained in that expression will be laid gradually bare. Ulee’s face is the face of a Vietnam veteran, a grieving widower and a surprisingly shrewd tactician in a life-and-death emergency.

At the height of his popularity, Henry Fonda was a beloved Hollywood avatar of plainspoken decency and dignity. He was our Tom Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath,” and he was also one of the few lonely men willing to speak truth to power in “12 Angry Men” and “The Ox-Bow Incident.” Peter Fonda,at 79, didn’t do anything so iconically heroic in “Ulee’s Gold.

The elegiac echoes of “On Golden Pond” aside, it was a performance that went beyond mere mimicry or homage. The storyis that of a man whose devotion to his artisanal 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 costs him dearly, and it expresses itself not through sweet sentiments but through blunt, decisive action.

JustinCChang Thanks Justin for the reminder. Still need to check this film out. FYI: It’s streaming for free on PlutoTV right now if anyone wants to see it too:

JustinCChang Easy Rider. Like Leonard Nimoy and Spock, Sean Connery and Bond, Lawrence Olivier and Hamlet. He embodied the character and the character embodied him, as no one else.

JustinCChang PeterFonda EasyRider harleydavidson

JustinCChang Most people remember 'Easy Rider', because they've seen the film, pictures or read about it, because of the cult status. Most people, who know Peter Fonda don't remember 'Ulee's gold'. More remember 'Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry'. 'Ulee's gold' was a good film, just not as famous.

JustinCChang True

JustinCChang My favorite performance of his.

JustinCChang Absolutely not. That’s moronic. Peter Fonda will always be attached to Easy Rider the way Santa Claus is attached to Christmas.

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