Tornando a casa

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

The strength of "Coming Home" is its realistic portrayal of the emotional effects of war on individuals far removed from battle. In particular, the film calls attention to the difficulties, hardships, and trauma that paraplegic vets are forced to endure, as a result of governmental neglect. The emphasis here is on life after combat, upon returning home, and the ensuing experiences, personal feelings and relationships, and the drudgery of everyday life. More effective than dialogue, the close-up camera shots of character's faces effectively convey the psychological suffering, the scars, brought about by exposure to war. In this context, I thought Jon Voight's performance was quite good.

The subject matter is so totally ... not glamorous. Yet its importance is undeniable. And so, I respect this film for its intent and its sensitivity. The film's humanistic message is surprisingly relevant 27 years after its release.

That said, the film's screenplay is weak. The plot rambles and meanders. The love triangle seems incongruent with the heavy-duty political message. The film is anti-climactic from start to finish. You keep thinking something big is going to happen. Then at the end, the film dwindles, and eventually just fizzles out. Finally, the background music, an assortment of late 60's pop songs, is intrusive.

Overall, "Coming Home" is less about entertainment than it is about education. I'm not sure that I would choose this film to watch on a first date. But, I would choose it as part of a high school course in governmental ethics.

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."

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.

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.