Coming Home (1978)

RELEASED IN 1978 and directed by Hal Ashby, "Coming Home" is a drama taking place on the shores of Southern California about a lonely Captain's wife (Jane Fonda) who befriends a bohemian, Vi (Penelope Milford), when her husband (Bruce Dern) is deployed to 'Nam in 1968. She volunteers at a Veteran's hospital where she meets a bitter paraplegic, who happens to be an old classmate (Jon Voight). Robert Carradine plays Vi's brother, who suffers PTSD.

Like all great dramas, "Coming Home" is realistic and takes its time to establish the characters and their situations. The emotions run the gamut of the human experience. The performances by the principals are superlative. The outstanding soundtrack includes twenty hits from the late 60s by artists like The Stones, The Beatles, Hendrix, Buffalo Springfield, Joplin, The Chambers Brothers, Jefferson Airplane, Dylan and so on. The movie's not so much "anti-war" as it is just depicting the way it was for combat Vets after coming home.

THE FILM RUNS 127 minutes and was shot in Manhattan Beach, near Los Angeles. WRITER: Waldo Salt & Robert C. Jones based on Nancy Dowd's story.

GRADE: A

Fmovies: Sadly and surprisingly relevant, "Coming Home" offers the perspective of one man who's war experience renders him not only paralyzed but unable to deny his own real life experience as a wartime soldier to the extent that he can continue supporting his government's patriotic dogma that one man should kill, torture or oppress other soldiers, men, women and children to defend motives he now views, from a wheelchair, as questionable. Awakening to this perspective is a woman who, attempting to aid the war effort and make herself useful during her husband's time of military service to his country, volunteers her time at the local Veteran's Hospital.

As she encounters the soldiers just returned battle with countless physical and psychological wounds too deep to enable their return to duty, she begins to understand the impossibility of their task to "get back to a normal life" and starts a longer journey out from under her own unquestioning acceptance of obeying principles that manufacture circumstances that make the peaceful pursuits of love and family inconceivable.

Her own husband does return to her, an officer who spent his tour of duty doing what he has accepted all of his life is the "right thing" for his country but he, too, is terribly damaged by what he has seen. When he discovers that he has returned to a wife that has broken both the sanctity of their marriage and the very foundation of their commonality as people - namely, upholding the belief that you must endure and inflict and perpetuate the tortures of Hell, itself, if your government demands it of you - he is unable to find a way forward in his life. As the last institutions that served as the structure of his sanity and happiness are wrenched out from under him, he faces a void too horrible to walk into and turns to the only way out that he can perceive.

This film is shot in what seems a sincere approach to relating the stories that were, immediately post-viet nam, being widely reported of and experienced by those U.S. men and women returning from service. It attempts, via narrative, to correlate them to the cultural experiences of the public. It seems to try to offer insight into the collective trauma inflicted by the very idea that war, as an institutional means of problem solving, is an acceptable and patriotic belief that merits the sacrifice of our lives and sanity.

Though the film definitely has its own perspective, it maintains respect for each of the characters represented. It remains the imperative of each viewer to decide the question for themselves.

"Coming Home" was the first Vietnam War movie that dealt with the soldiers' plight sympathetically. Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda) is volunteering at the Veterans' Hospital in Los Angeles while her husband Bob (Bruce Dern) serves in Vietnam. In the process of working in the hospital, Sally sees how the hospital is unprepared to treat the people who are coming back from the war. When paraplegic veteran Luke Martin (Jon Voight) demands better treatment, rather than listen to him, they tranquilize him so that they won't have to deal with him. Over time, Sally and Luke fall in love. When Bob returns from Vietnam, he is completely damaged emotionally. The final scene shows the overall state of the world as a result of the Vietnam War.

Whenever I hear the Rolling Stones' song "Out of Time", it reminds me of "Coming Home". One thing that you get to see in the movie is how, when Sally and Bob are having sex, she is clearly not enjoying it; when Sally and Luke are having sex, she clearly is enjoying it. Fonda and Voight won well-deserved Oscars for their roles, and if you ask me, the movie should have won Best Picture. A solid masterpiece.

Coming Home fmovies. Man, I watched this with no idea of what is was about, but I liked the directors other films, I was blown away by this films subtle power. A film like this would not be made today. The 70's was such a great time for film-making. The "risks" that were taken or at least it would be deemed as such in the film climate we are in today. The performances in this film were spectacular, the directing top notch, the pace beautiful and the ending was a punch in the gut to those who want definitive answers. Iloved it. We don't see this nowadays and regretfully probably never will again. At least we can enjoy these masterpieces today and compare to some of the drab nonsense that is produced nowadays. Don't get me wrong there is some great stuff being produced today as well, but you will not see anything as raw and unadulterated as the 70's gem.

I agree with most of the comments about the overall quality of the film. It was definitely a teamwork political statement. The soundtrack is stunning,not only in the selection of songs from the period - by far the best film in this respect - but the subtle manner in which they are integrated into the film's soundtrack. The acting is good to excellent - Fonda, Voigt and Carradine in particular.

However, my one complaint is with the Dern character. In this I speak from some personal experience, as a vet with a tour of duty in Nam. This may be quibbling, but...perhaps his contract had a clause prohibiting cutting his hair, but the locks (for a Marine captain) are much too long. He would have received a direct order to get them cut . Also, the close relationship between Dern and the sergeant is out of character. Marine Corps Captains did not hang out with E5 enlisted men. This is even more blatant in the scene after Dern's return from Nam when he goes out drinking and brings home three enlisted Marines. A Marine Corps Captain would not be drinking in uniform with enlisted men on or near the base - let alone bringing them home. I won't go into the problems I have with Dern's apparent and largely unexplained repulsion at what his men did in the field. However, Dern aside, the film itself has a very authentic feel to it and there are unforgettable scenes such as those in the VA hospital and Voigt's final speech to high school students as Tim Buckley's haunting "One I Was" can be heard in the background. In many respects this film is the direct antithesis of Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket", which while visually authentic suffers from a lack of emotion.

Without a single scene of combat footage, this story manages to convey, in realistically painful terms, how much Vietnam scarred the landscape of America. And this is only a fictional viewpoint. The true life accounts must be gut wrenching. No one returned from the war the same person. To suggest a film be made showing an unaffected soldier would be incredibley unbelievable. When attitudes change and characters grow from harsh realities, you can't help but be caught up in their struggle. People you would never expect to protest a US -involved conflict, or even question it, did so with Vietnam. The Jane Fonda Sally character is such a person. She begins the picture somewhat naive, easily trusting, and sort of tied to her straight laced military existence as the wife of an enlisted man. But then she sees an entirely different world when he's gone, and over months, falls for his total opposite, symbolizing how much she can never go back to the woman she was at the beginning. It's very subtle and deeply felt acting that can achieve this and both Fonda and Voight deserved their Oscars for their moving and expert performances. Bruce Dern is the hardest to sympathsize with on the surface, but you realize he's been scarred by what he's seen too, and what has happened to him in his absence, so his world becomes more bitter as everything he once knew shatters around him. The 3 experiences, his, Voight's and Fonda's merge together at the end, in a series of heartbreaking realizations, until you're left as broken as the country was after the war. You can't NOT be affected by what happened in Nam. It's impossible. And this film clearly shows why. It's the most personal and touching of Hollywood's Vietnam treatments. And certainly the deepest acted. Buy a copy and judge for yourself...