COMING HOME (Hal Ashby, US, 1978). THEMES: EFFECTS OF COMBAT AND INJURY ON SURVIVING MILITARY; IMPACT OF WAR ON FAMILY BACK HOME. SPOILER ALERT! The effects of the Vietnam War on combatants and their loved ones are explored in a realistic, intimate fashion in this fine film, which still holds up very well 23 years after it was made. Released the same year as The Deer Hunter, which explored similar issues in a surreal and more abstract manner. Jane Fonda is Sally, the prim middle class wife of Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), a Marine captain who is ordered into combat in VN. Sally starts to volunteer at the local VA hospital, where she meets Luke Martin (Jon Voight), former star football player in her high school graduating class who, as a sargeant in the Marines in VN, was left a paraplegic by a shrapnel wound. Luke is embittered, volatile, reclusive, never wanting to leave the hospital. Gradually He and Sally fall in love.
Bob returns home after an accidentally self-inflicted gunshot injury and learns of Sally's affair through FBI surveillance information (Luke's activities were tracked after he created an antiwar protest by chaining himself to the gates of a Marine base). Already way out of sorts after his duty tour in country and disappointed that he did not return home a hero, Bob angrily confronts the couple, but ultimately suicides. There is also a compelling side story concerning Sally's friendship with another young woman (Penelope Milford) whose brother (Robert Carradine) is also a patient at the VA, suffering from a psychosis that began in VN. Voight, Fonda, Dern and Milford are all splendid. (Deer Hunter got the best picture Oscar in 1978, but Voight and Fonda won for acting. Too bad the Academy was so moved by spectacle; Coming Home is the better film.) Grade: A (01/02)
No comments:
Post a Comment