Amargo Regresso

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

Obviously any film about Viet Nam that stars Jane Fonda and Jon Voight is going to cause more than a few knees to jerk. Fondas embracing the enemy and Voights devout pacifism have both been well-documented, so there's no need to elaborate. Don't let this cause you to avoid this film. Many veterans were on hand for the filming, and they saw that they were taking part in something special. If they can draw a truce with Fonda, than you can as well. The opening scene sets a tone for the film that it never veers from. A group of disabled vets play pool, and directly confront each other over why they were there, and what it all means. Director Hal Ashby (RIP) pulls no punches here. These vets aren't scholars debating on MacNeil-Lehrer. They struggle with these questions. They don't have the fancy initials after their names that impress people so much. There just the real people that fought the war.

The rest of the film follows on this point. Special care goes into each character.

Voights Luke Martin went to war to impress girls and feed his titanic ego. Because Ashby and his writers (Waldo Salt, Robert C. Jones and Nancy Dowd) didn't back off on showing Luke's bad side, it makes his transformation. He becomes a better person, because he develops the strength to look inside himself.

Bruce Dern gives an excellent performance, as well, in what is probably the trickiest part. Derns Bob Hyde is GI all the way, but returns from his first combat detail in a state of turmoil. He sees the insanity first hand and, quite frankly, can't handle it. The nice thing here is that he's not simply disillusioned by the politics of the war, but more by war, itself. It's to this films credit, that they didn't have Dern return home and do an about face and start protesting. That story has been told. Instead, once again, we see a human being struggling to understand things that may be unknowable. What makes a man cut another man's ears off, and throw them in his knapsack? How are you supposed to feel, when your fellow soldiers are boiling the flesh off a human skull, so they can mount it on a stake?

Oddly enough, Fondas character, Sally Hyde, may be the least "political" character in the film. Sure, she sees injustices at the VA hospital and gets involved volunteering, but this is merely as a novice. She asks very rudimentary questions about why the vets are being ignored, but she asks as a sympathetic human being, not an activist. As she eventually expands her horizons, she changes from an officer's wife into a more mature woman. As this happens, she falls in love with Voight. Neither person really wants it to happen. Voight doesn't want to betray a fellow soldier. Fonda doesn't want to betray her loyal husband. No easy answer.

It's a shame that "Coming Home" occupies such a small niche in film history. It's a quiet, thoughtful film that patiently tells its story. It doesn't have a single battle scene, but it remains incredibly powerful. Robert Carradines breakdown while he plays his guitar and sings, is a scene that should be taught in film school. Just one moment in an incredible film.

Don't let this gem fade away.

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.

Hal Ashby's film shares many of the characteristics of the other big Vietnam film of 1978, "The Deer Hunter." Both are passionate and essentially incoherent in their view of the war… As Ashby and screenplay writers see it, most American soldiers who experienced the war came back mentally and/or physically ravaged…

An introductory pool table conversation among several disabled vets establishes the ground rules… Anyone who defends the war for any reason is wrong… Cut to enthusiastic Marine Capt. Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) and his naive wife Sally (Jane Fonda) in the Officer's Club…

It is 1968…

A military campaign conducted by forces of the Viet Cong has just started and Capt. Hyde is looking forward to his tour of duty in Vietnam... As a dedicated military officer, he sees it primarily as an opportunity for progress… As soon as he leaves, Sally is forced to find housing off the base and moves into a new apartment by the beach with another Marine wife—the bohemian Vi Munson (Penelope Milford), whose traumatized brother Bill (Robert Carradine) is a patient at the local Veteran's Hospital…

Physically, Bill is fine, but "they sent him back without an ignition," Vi says… Lonely and looking for something to do, Sally volunteers at the hospital and runs across embittered cripple Luke Martin (Jon Voight). They soon discover that they went to the same high school, where he was the star quarterback and she was a cheerleader…

Now, paralyzed from the waist down Luke is subject to furious, self-pitying rages, understandable but still unpleasant and offensive… Sally externalizes his troubles, his scars, and his frustrations…And through Luke's eyes, Sally's absolute outlook on life starts to change… They soon become fairly close turning their friendship into a torrid affair… At the same time, Sally's husband was away discovering the horrors of the war…

There was a particular chemistry between Fonda and Voight which gave the film a certain magic

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...