Retour

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...

This film, the `other' 1978 movie about the Vietnam War, `Coming Home' takes a different approach than Michael Cimino's stark, shocking, `The Deer Hunter', which won a Best Picture Oscar.

Cimino used a power approach to deliver his message, drumming the filmgoer with sounds and images. Hal Ashby's `Coming Home' uses a more subdued, character approach to explore the real price of the Vietnam War.

I'm not so sure I'd agree that either Jon Voight (Academy Award-Best Actor) or Jane Fonda (Academy Award-Best Actress) is exemplary (they both won Academy Awards) but I think they are both very good. The bottom line is that this was an important movie, at a critical time, and the subject matter and its presentation really hit home. This is a film that is impossible to ignore, in 1978, or today, no matter what your political or social sensibilities may be. The language, the attitudes of all the characters is open, honest, frank. At the time this film was made, that was indeed breakthrough, for this subject matter, paramount.

An absolute must see.

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.

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

Sally (Jane Fonda) has a husband fighting in Vietnam and she feels optimistic about American involvement there. However she works at a hospital as a nurse and soon becomes caretaker of a bitter war veteran named Luke (Jon Voight).

At first, she is repelled by him - but over time grows to love him and admires his cause. (Luke feels the Vietnam War is a mistake and that countless innocent lives are being pointlessly lost.) "Coming Home" is the quintessential Vietnam War film - it's anti-war, pessimistic, gritty, depressing, and ultimately sort of whining. Some Vietnam films to go a bit overboard on the "tears for the poor souls" stuff and become very politically correct - "Coming Home" is like this and that might turn some viewers off.

However I thought the plot, characters, directing and writing were all interesting. Hal Ashby ("Shampoo") shows talent behind the camera and Jon Voight and Jane Fonda display chemistry in front of it.

I'm not typically a fan of Voight (or even Fonda to be honest) but they both do a good job here. Voight's final rousing speech to the classroom of students at the movie is simultaneously touching and uplifting. And the love scene is handled with care and doesn't seem gratuitous or unnecessary.

"Coming Home" may have its flaws, but I think it's one of the better "Vietnam movies" to come out of the era. You should see it if you enjoyed "The Deer Hunter" or "Platoon."