Coming Home (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Mar 15, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Hal AshbyRelease Date(s)
1978 (January 16, 2024)Studio(s)
United Artists (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B
Review
One of the best films about the Vietnam War has no scenes set in Vietnam, and there are no scenes of combat. But the lingering pain of that experience for fighting men is very much in evidence in Hal Ashby’s Coming Home (1978), a film less remembered than, say, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now or Platoon. It’s grounded in authentic emotion and believable character relationships that resonate still. And, being made so close to the end of the war, it has an authenticity lacking in movies made soon after, during the 1980s, for instance. Coming Home feels very immediate while those made after were, effectively, period films.
Jane Fonda—the “Hanoi Jane” reviled by conservatives of the time—stars. At the peak of her stardom and power in Hollywood, Fonda made three films in close proximity all basically operating from the same premise. In Julia (1977), Coming Home (1978), and The China Syndrome (1980), Fonda plays an unformed woman that circumstances and relationships with more enlightened or similarly struggling characters (Julia and Dashiell Hammett in Julia, Jon Voight’s character in Coming Home, and the Michael Douglas and Jack Lemmon characters in China Syndrome) all test her belief system, preconceived notions of the role of working women, and by the end of each film she emerges as a very different kind of person than she was when their stories began. All three films are excellent and were commercially successful, so it’s surprisingly Fonda didn’t continue making films in this vein.
In Coming Home, Fonda is Sally, the loyal wife of Capt. Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), a conservative career Marine who in 1968 is about to be deployed to Vietnam. Bob doesn’t want his wife to work while he’s away but, uncomfortable being left alone for the first time in her life, Sally decides to volunteer at the local Veterans Administration hospital. There she meets Luke Martin (Jon Voight), onetime captain of the same high school football team where Sally had been a cheerleader. Now, however, Luke is a paraplegic from shrapnel wounds while serving in Vietnam. No meet-cute scene here: he, full of rage lying on a gurney, collides with Sally in a hallway causing his urine bag to spill all over her.
At the hospital Sally discovers wards choking with broken men, men broken physically and mentally. Of the latter, Sally’s friend Vi Munson (Penelope Milford) looks after her mentally scalded kid brother, Bill (Robert Carradine). Luke graduates to using a wheelchair, starts rebuilding his life, and warms up to Sally, who invites him to dinner. Their burgeoning romance seems thwarted by Sally’s loyalty to Bob, but when he invites her to join him in Hong Kong for five days of R&R, she finds her husband disturbingly changed from experiences in Vietnam he mostly won’t talk about, though he does mention the men under his command decapitating the heads of the enemy and sticking them on spears. Upon returning to her California beachside home, Sally renews her relationship with Luke, which becomes sexual, but still resists leaving her husband.
Coming Home was a pet project of Fonda’s dating back to at least 1972, around the time she became friends with Ron Kovic (Born on the Fourth of July) and hired Nancy Dowd to write the script. The script was later rewritten by Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones, and went through several directors with roles offered to various stars (Nicholson, Stallone, Pacino, etc.) over several years before it was suddenly thrust into production.
The film works so well because everything is understated and intimate, even matter-of-fact, and identifiable. Sally’s rented house is small and rather cramped. When she invites Luke to dinner she has navigate him and his wheelchair through a narrow walkway with no ramp. It’s a bit of a struggle to get him inside and, later, together they build a ramp to provide him easier access. After one of Luke’s friends commits suicide, Luke chains himself and his wheelchair to the gates of an Armed Forces recruitment center, but later has trouble articulating what drove him to do this. Near the end of the film he speaks to a group of young high school boys about his experiences; it’s emotionally powerful because, despite being rather rambling, it’s straight from the heart.
Perhaps no better scene describes the film’s effectiveness better than the big lovemaking scene between Sally and Luke. She’s not sure how to make love to a paralyzed man, and he, making love for the first time since his wounding, isn’t quite sure how to proceed, either. Each is a little embarrassed and uncomfortable at first, but they find their way, Sally eventually experiencing what obviously is her first-ever orgasm. Finally, it becomes one of the most sensual while also realistic lovemaking scenes in the movies.
The film falls short of perfection toward the end, particularly concerning the final resolution of Dern’s character, which is both pat and derivative, reportedly changed from a more interesting concept at Fonda’s insistence. It isn’t terrible, but it doesn’t jibe with the rest of the film, which otherwise is so honest it’s quietly breathtaking.
Licensed from MGM, Kino’s Blu-ray of Coming Home looks and sounds great. Presented in 1080p high-def at 1.85:1 widescreen, the image defies its age looking almost brand-new. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is likewise excellent for a mono release. Optional English subtitles are provided and the disc is Region “A” encoded.
Extras are repurposed from earlier home video releases. They include an audio commentary track with stars Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler. There are two older featurettes: Coming Back Home and Hal Ashby: A Man Out of Time, and a trailer finishes up the supplements.
Character-driven and understated, Coming Home in many ways holds up much better, and ultimately is more powerful, because it is so matter-of-fact, soft-selling concepts where too many Vietnam movies go overboard with scattergun symbolism. Highly recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV