Inarguably the best movie
made during the ’70s about the unique difficulties facing American veterans
returning from Vietman, Coming Home
is at once moving, political, provocative, and tender—and it’s also the apex of
actress Jane Fonda’s anti-Vietnam War activism, even though it was released
three years after the fall of Saigon. While “Hanoi Jane” alienated as many
people as she inspired while the war was raging, she used Coming Home—which she developed—to focus her rage at needless
conflict through the prism of war’s impact on individuals. Rather than being polemic,
even though some detractors saw the film that way, Coming Home is poetic.
When the movie opens in early 1968, Sally
Hyde (Fonda) is happily married to a Marine officer named Bob Hyde (Bruce
Dern), and both unquestionably accept the rightness of
U.S. involvement in Indochina. Once Bob leaves for his tour of duty, Sally
begins to hear different opinions about the war, notably from her feminist
friend Vi (Penelope Milford); Sally also begins to question the subservient
role she plays in her marriage. Eventually, Sally volunteers at a VA hospital,
where she meets returning soldiers including embittered but passionate Luke
Martin (Jon Voight), who is paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a
wheelchair. As part of her larger spiritual awakening, Sally recognizes Luke’s
humanity, and they become lovers in a crucial scene that director Hal Ashby
executes with a memorable combination of eroticism and poignancy. The fragile
world that Luke and Sally build together is upset, however, when Bob returns
from Vietnam, having been changed in disturbing ways that echo the film’s theme
of how war affects different people differently.
Placing Sally’s character at
the center of the story was a genius move on many levels. First and most
obviously, the role gives Fonda a way to express her deep feelings about the
war; she dramatizes the ravages of conflict by meticulously charting Sally’s
shifting attitudes. Second, making the central character a witness to the horrors
of Vietnam—rather than an active participant—allows the audience to see
soldiers as real-world people instead of battleground heroes. What does it mean
when a draftee is rewarded for his service by wounds that will last the rest of
his life? What does it mean when a career soldier encounters horrors during
combat for which he wasn’t prepared? How can those left behind in the
homeland ever hope to understand the experiences of soldiers?
Coming Home is a deeply compassionate
film, with Ashby and cinematographer Haskell Wexler capturing a spectrum of
complex emotions in soft, painterly images; the movie is a tapestry of souls
making connections and, alternately, slamming against insurmountable barriers. Coming Home is also a showcase for
spectacular acting. Fonda and Voight both won Oscars, Fonda for her precise
demarcations of stages in one woman’s life and Voight for his deeply touching
openness. (His show-stopping speech to a group of young people near the end of
the picture, while a bit of a narrative digression given its length, is among
the finest moments Voight’s ever had onscreen.) Dern, unluckily
overshadowed by his costars because he’s playing yet another in his long line
of screen psychos, gives a performance every bit as powerful as Fonda’s and
Voight’s—portraying a man who’s betrayed by the ideals to which he’s dedicated
his life, Dern is frightening and yet also completely sympathetic.
Coming Home: RIGHT ON
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