COMING HOME Movie Review
1978 Hal Ashby
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. In this instance, though, the filmmakers' sharply left-of-center sensibility piles on additional political baggage. As Ashby and writers Nancy Dowd, Robert C. Jones, and Waldo Salt see it, each American who experienced the war—even for as brief a time as two weeks—came back mentally and/or physically devastated. No gray areas of doubt or disagreement are presented. Every veteran is damaged goods. But the ones who really hate the war are good in bed.
An introductory pool table conversation among several real disabled vets establishes the ground rules. Anyone who defends the war for any reason is wrong. Cut to Marine Capt. Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) and his wife Sally (Jane Fonda) in the Officer's Club. It's 1968. The Tet Offensive has just started and Bob is looking forward to his tour of duty in Vietnam. As a career officer, he sees it primarily as an opportunity for advancement. As soon as he leaves, Sally is forced to find housing off the base and moves into a beach place with Vi Munson (Penelope Milford), whose brother Bill (Robert Carradine) is a patient at the local Veteran's Administration hospital. Physically he's fine, but “they sent him back without an ignition,” Vi says. With time on her hands, Sally volunteers at the hospital and meets paraplegic Luke Martin (Jon Voight). A few years before, they had gone 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 violent, self-pitying rages, understandable but still ugly. Sally makes him her project, though from the beginning, it is obvious that her motives are partly sexual, partly altruistic. At the same time, her husband is discovering the horrors of the war.
Given that beginning, the film might have examined the war and its effects on America from three different, yet equally valid, points of view. Some have suggested that Nancy Dowd's original story worked along those lines. The final result, however, focuses almost entirely on the sexual and political radicalization of Sally and Luke, giving Bob, the hapless husband, short shrift. The filmmakers' lack of understanding and empathy for the military is obvious from the opening scenes. While the other characters have historically appropriate dress and hairstyles, Capt. Hyde's unruly curls would never have been found on a Marine in 1968, and his personal attitudes are set forth in a brusque pro forma manner. More importantly, his experiences in the war are alluded to only in passing, never shown or fully described. Finally, the resolution of their three-sided relationship is so pat that it insults any viewer who has taken the film seriously.
The filmmakers do deserve some credit for addressing—however inaccurately—the problems faced by returning veterans. At the time, no major film had really done that since The Best Years of Our Lives. Also, in visual terms, Ashby and director of photography Haskell Wexler use seemingly natural light and well-chosen locations to create that rough, lived-in realism found in the best American films of the '70s. If only they had checked their politics at the door. In practical terms, Coming Home and John Wayne's The Green Berets are opposite sides of the same coin.
Cast: Jane Fonda (Sally Hyde), Jon Voight (Luke Martin), Bruce Dern (Capt. Bob Hyde), Penelope Milford (Vi Munson), Robert Carradine (Bill Munson), Robert Ginty (Sgt. Dink Mobley), Mary Gregory (Martha Vickery), Kathleen Miller (Kathy Delise), Beeson Carroll (Capt. Carl Delise), Willie Tyler (Virgil), Charles Cyphers (Pee Wee), Olivia Cole (Corrine), Tresa Hughes (Nurse De Groot), Bruce French (Dr. Lincoln), Richard Lawson (Pat), Rita Taggart (Johnson), Pat Corley (Harris); Written by: Robert C. Jones; Cinematography by: Haskell Wexler. Producer: Jerome Hellman. Awards: Academy Awards '78: Best Actor (Voight), Best Actress (Fonda), Best Original Screenplay; Cannes Film Festival '78: Best Actor (Voight); Golden Globe Awards '79: Best Actor—Drama (Voight), Best Actress—Drama (Fonda); Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards '78: Best Actor (Voight), Best Actress (Fonda), Best Film; New York Film Critics Awards '78: Best Actor (Voight); Writers Guild of America '78: Best Original Screenplay; Nominations: Academy Awards '78: Best Director (Ashby), Best Film Editing, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Dern), Best Supporting Actress (Milford). MPAA Rating: R. Running Time: 130 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV, Closed Caption.