The elegiac echoes of "On Golden Pond" aside, it was a performance that went beyond mere mimicry or homage. (Still, it is worth noting that Henry Fonda was a skilled beekeeper and once starred in an ill-fated 1978 killer-bee disaster flick called "The Swarm.") The story told in "Ulee's Gold" is 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. In ways that Fonda acknowledged at the time and that seem only more poignant now, the performance felt like an act of reconciliation — an attempt to make sense of an emotionally distant father who cast a lengthy shadow over his childhood and his career.