Coming Home, one of two movies about the Vietnam War nominated for Best Picture of 1978, takes place entirely in the United States. Unlike the Oscar winner that year, The Deer Hunter, which devotes about one third of the narrative to what happens to its male characters in Vietnam, Coming Home is primarily about the consequences of the war back home, particularly on the women left behind and on the veterans who have been injured or disabled by war. It's one of those women and one of those veterans who are the focus of this gripping, emotional movie. Even more than the final third of The Deer Hunter, Coming Home suggests just how much of an effect on people's lives fighting in Vietnam had.
Jane Fonda plays Sally Hyde, a woman who has never led a truly independent life. She's married to Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), who's about to leave for Vietnam and is busy preparing himself for whatever the war might bring. Hyde is a bit of an idealist. He hasn't been to active duty yet, so he's destined to be disillusioned by what he encounters once he's there. For proof of that, all we need to do is look at Jon Voight's Luke Martin. Luke is a former football star who's been injured in battle and cannot walk. He's angry over his condition, certainly, but he's particularly angry because he cannot understand why his country sent him to fight in a country like Vietnam.
Sally and Luke attended high school together, and once she starts volunteering at the veterans' hospital where Luke is being treated, she begins to understand what he and the other veterans feel about their time in the service. She's surprised because it doesn't initially fit what she thinks her husband believes, but eventually, she comes to develop her own ideas about the consequences of the war. It's because she listens to the veterans. She even tries to enlist the help of some other other military wives, but they are reluctant to improve conditions for the injured veterans at the base hospital. They don't feel it's their "place" to do so. Sally, though, begins doing what she can to make Luke's transition into a normal life easier, inviting him to dinner as a first step to understanding him better.
Fonda and Voight won Oscars for their work here, and both are exceptional. Fonda shows us Sally as a woman without a clear sense of her own identity at the start of the film, but she grows into a fully realized individual by the end. She takes a place of her own near the beach and even buys a car (a convertible, that traditional symbol of independence) for herself. She comes a long way from being a volunteer entrusted only with handing out juice and coffee to a woman who's ready to leave her husband for her lover because it will make her happier. I wouldn't normally spend a lot of time discussing sex scenes in a film like this, but you merely need to look at those involving Sally and Bob to sense how different the experience is with Luke. She finally achieves an orgasm with Luke, perhaps further freeing her from her sense of obligation to her husband. That's a huge step for someone like Sally.
Fonda's Sally also undergoes a physical transformation as the film progresses. When we first see her, she's dressed in what would have been considered proper attire for a housewife married to a military man. In fact, her dresses could be considered a kind of uniform. Her hair is straight and carefully tied with a ribbon, never a strand out of place. Later, though, she allows her hair to be curly, its more natural state, and even her clothes become looser and more, well, "fashionable." It's quite a shock to see her revert to her earlier look when she visits her husband for a while in Hong Kong. We've gotten to accustomed to the "new" Sally that we feel almost as uncomfortable as she does.
Voight has the harder acting job, though, I think. When we first meet Luke, he's lying on a gurney, pushing himself around with crutches. He yells at Sally because she knocks his colostomy bag off the gurney. He drinks too much, and he's usually in a foul mood around the hospital workers. They even sedate him sometimes just to keep him under control. When you contrast that image of Luke with the one of him as Sally's lover, it's clear why Voight won the Oscar. Luke is such a different man after Sally comes into his life. He's still disillusioned with the war, enough to chain himself to the fence at the recruiting center, but he also finds a sense of joy in spending time at the beach with Sally. The wheelchair ride they take is particularly romantic, as is the scene where she tells him she's going to Hong Kong to see Bob. It's tough to pull those moments off without looking too self-pitying, but Voight does so.
The film is also blessed with strong work by the supporting cast. One of the strongest performances is by Penelope Milford as Sally's friend Vi. Vi is not married to the soldier who leaves her for Vietnam, but she wishes for his return as much as Sally initially misses Bob. Vi also has a brother, played by Robert Carradine, who's suffered a nervous breakdown due to his involvement in Vietnam, perhaps adding to her concerns about her absent lover. Milford is so good in the scenes where Vi's emotions are the most revealed, such as when she and Sally go back to a hotel room with two guys, only to have Vi begin crying over the sadness of her life without Dink (Robert Ginty). It's a resonant scene, and it undoubtedly was a strong reason Milford was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
Dern was likewise nominated for Best Supporting Actor. It's perhaps the best acting I've ever seen him do in his long career. Here he portrays a man who becomes disillusioned with what the soldiers are doing in Vietnam, only to discover that while he has been gone, his wife has started an affair--even more disillusionment. There's always a sense that Dern's Bob is carrying a level of barely concealed rage, even in the movie's early scenes before he leaves for battle. He also isn't a very loving husband at any point in the film, so it's easy to see why Sally finds comfort with someone else. He has to reveal that the injury which has brought him back to the United States is embarrassing, not an injury suffered by a hero. Bob seems to come to a realization about what he's achieved in his life, and Dern's playing of the final scenes with Bob are particularly tense even though you know what he's planning to do.
There's an interesting series of scenes involving the U.S. government's surveillance of Luke. Particularly after the incident where he chained himself to the recruiting depot fence, Luke is considered a potential threat to national security. There are tapes and photographs of the times that he and Sally are together, and they always seem to have a van following them wherever they go. When Bob returns, it's the FBI agents who tell him about Luke and Sally's affair, prompting the confrontation between the three of them that is one of the film's most intense sequences.
The most devastating sequence in the film, though, comes near the end. Luke has been invited to a high school to speak as the counter-argument to a Marine recruiter. The film allows quite a few characters to discuss patriotism, actually, including one ironic speech at a Fourth of July picnic attended by the disabled veterans. Luke's speech to the teens is about what he was asked to do in Vietnam and what he wanted to achieve: "I wanted to be a war hero, man. I wanted to go out and kill for my country. And, now, I'm here to tell you that I have killed for my country or whatever. And I don't feel good about it. Because there's not enough reason, man, to feel a person die in your hands or to see your best buddy get blown away. I'm here to tell you, it's a lousy thing, man. I don't see any reason for it." It's a powerful anti-war speech. I know that many people think that all war movies are truly anti-war, but Coming Home certainly allows us not only to see the perspective of those who opposed Vietnam, but their reasons for arguing against America's involvement.
Oscar Wins: Actor (Voight), Actress (Fonda), and Original Screenplay
Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Dern), Supporting Actress (Milford), and Film Editing
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