Jane Fonda and Jon Voight roll Together in Opposition to the Vietnam War in Hal Ashby ‘70s Classic
DIRECTED BY HAL ASHBY/1978
BLU-RAY STREET DATE: JANUARY 16, 2024/KL STUDIO CLASSICS
A Letterboxd acquaintance of mine summed up Hal Ashby’s 1978 drama Coming Home by saying “Jane Fonda and Jon Voight spend the movie getting together while everyone else commits suicide.” While that may not be altogether inaccurate, it’s a rather dismissive approach to what is a tenderly raw but appropriately rough look at the plight of neglected vets back from the Vietnam War.
Voight stars as Luke Martin, a former military sergeant now confined to a wheelchair for life. It’s 1968, and Martin is one irate hippie-lookin’ sumbitch when we first meet him at the V.A. hospital scooting around on his belly on a stretcher. His meet-cute with Fonda’s character, Sally Hyde, consists of him accidentally plowing his stretcher into her, bursting his bag of urine all over her. If passion can bloom from this, it must truly be real.
Luke (once he graduates to a wheelchair, which Voight pilots like the dickens) and Sally, over time, become a naturally sweet and well-matched couple. The catch is, she’s married. She’s married to one Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern at his most gangly festering), a buttoned-up military man so committed that he signs up for a second Vietnam deployment. With him gone for most of the movie, Sally gradually can’t help falling in love with charming war objector Luke. (No, his injury doesn’t hobble him in the sack).
Kino Lorber has released Coming Home on Blu-ray before, back in the pre-“KL Studio Classics” days of 2014. Despite this current release getting a spiffy new slipcover, it seems to be the exact same disc, extras and all. For those new to them, the extras are particularly great to have. Yes, all from the faded halcyon days of DVD, when it was commonplace for the likes of actors Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, and cinematographer Haskel Wexler to come in from the cold to participate in a retrospective audio commentary- which, they did. Besides that, the old featurettes “Coming Back Home” and the sentimental “Hal Ashby – A Man out of Time” also have made the trip. And the trailer. The high-definition Blu-ray format grants Wexler’s perfectly muted cinematography the representational respect it’s due.
Back in its day, Coming Home was quite the awards contender, ultimately nabbing Oscars for its original screenplay as well as for leads Voight and Fonda. For cinephiles, it’s remembered as one of the several memorable works on director Hal Ashby’s amazing streak of seminal 1970s greats. These days, some see fit to besmirch it for its aggressive use of popular album rock needle-drops. These include but are scarcely limited to “Hey Jude” and “Strawberry Fields” by The Beatles; “Just Like a Woman” by Bob Dylan; “Manic Depression” by Jimi Hendrix, and right up top and setting the tone, “Out of Time” by The Rolling Stones. For my money, Ashby’s uses of these familiar tunes work more often than not, often very, very well.
Smack in the middle of Ashby’s popular lighter fare like Shampoo and enigmatic explorations like Being There, we have the somber eyeopener Coming Home. A message movie, an Oscar movie, even a prestige movie at the time, it’s understandable that it might continue to garner side-eyes and automatic disregard. But it shouldn’t. The film’s empathy for the perpetually raw and horrendous plight of cast-aside combat veterans (many real ones populate the film’s hospital scenes) is genuine and transmitted with care.
Yet, thanks to Ashby behind the camera and Dern and Voight in front of it, there’s a necessary edge- an uncomfortable edge- that is maintained throughout Coming Home. Voight, so sincere in his character’s anger, frustrations, and ultimately, self-assurance, is simply a beautifully magnetic presence in this film. Paired on screen with Fonda, the two make for a formidable protest couple. Sadly, such roles would eventually be fleeting for Voight, who’s gone down an altogether different path of crippling frustrations that have come home to fester. Coming Home, then, along with everything else, serves as yet another kind of reminder that while we can’t go back to earlier times (the wounds will never mend), vigilance of decency and compassion must be maintained.