Ulee's Gold (1997)
In a summer with movies filled with explosions, chases, and stunts, it is interesting to see a movie centered around a quiet beekeeper who faces an equal amount of danger with grace and patience.
Peter Fonda might have gone down in film history best known for being Henry Fonda's son and having been in a film that influenced a generation (Easy Rider); but now he will have made an indellible impression on anybody who sees Ulee's Gold. Fonda has mentioned in interviews that he emulated his father when preparing for this role.
Ulysses Jackson spends his days and years as he always has; living in central Florida, looking after his bees and keeping his family business within the family. Ulee is raising two granddaughters--Casey and Penny. Their father Jimmy is in jail and their mother, Helen, has left them to do God only knows what in Orlando.
Life is humming along as it needs to until the sins of the son are visited on the father as well as the rest of the clan. Ulysses winds up leaving his bees at the most crucial time of the season when he is asked to go retrieve Helen (Christine Dunford) from Orlando, where Eddie and Ferris--two criminal associates of Jimmy's--have loaded her up on drugs, or have taken advantage of her condition, and have discovered that Ulee can find something they want. They make it clear that they will do harm to the family if he doesn't comply.
Of course, all of this is a red herring. Much like The 39 Steps, Ulee learns that no man is an island. Ulee is forced to realize that sometimes, you need to accept help, and help others. Shut down since his wife Penelope has died, Ulee finds that he is going to have to trust someone, and that someone is his tenant Connie Hope (Patricia Richardson), a doctor who helps detox his daughter-in-law. Even while a dangerous situation exists, Ulee continues his backbreaking labors, but gets help from his granddaughters and even his daughter-in-law, slowly, one by one
Great performances are turned out by all. It was great to see Patricia Richardson do something beyond the limitations of her role as Tim Allen's wife on Home Improvement. Especially wonderful is Vanessa Zima as the younger granddaughter, Penny. An rather wonderful scene is her description to her mother of how the bees are sometimes scared and fly off, and have to be brought back. Watch for it.
The movie makes some wonderful use of dissolves and jump cuts; they really accentuate the monotony and continuity of the life Ulee leads in swampy rural Florida. If the film has any fault, it is sparing the expenses on sound. Some dialogue seems to get lost between regional dialect and/or mumbling. Other than that, writer/director Victor Nunez.
P.S.: You get two extra points if you can think of a classical story in which Ulysses must leave the stalwart Penelope to help find the lost Helen.
Copyright 1997 Seth J. Bookey, New York, NY 10021
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8588/kino.html
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