Coming Home DVD

 Vietnam Wartime Story
A powerful movie of the effects and aftermath of a difficult war. Jane Fonda, John Voight, and Bruce Dern play such compelling roles, the volunteer wife, the disabled vet, and the eager officer wanting to servce his country, whom returns dealing with his demons created by the war. A must have to have in one's collection.
Submitted by syls.2 (El Paso, Texas) 
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 A touching, sincere, compassionate and humorous film.
With John Wayne's chauvinistic "The Green Berets" (1968) as a reference point, Hollywood avoided Vietnam for nearly a decade. Though certainly a topic worth examining, the Vietnam War remained virtually unexplored by major filmmakers until 1978, when three superb motion pictures dealing with the subject were released almost back to back--Hal Ashby's "Coming Home", Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" and Ted Post's "Go Tell the Spartans!" Both "Coming Home" and "The Deer Hunter" were enormously profitable and, somewhat ironically, were the two biggest winners in the 1978 Oscar race. "Coming Home" was a rather personal, intimate drama, while "The Deer Hunter" was a sprawling, three-hour epic, featuring a huge cast, extensive location shooting, and some of the strongest depictions of the "horrors of war" ever presented. Despite their differences, however, both shared the same central theme--how the lives of ordinary Americans were affected by Vietnam--and this, more than anything else, is what made them so popular with audiences. Jane Fonda devoted five years--from inception to release--to her feature film about the Vietnam war, and the result, "Coming Home" was a heavily encoded tale which attempted to describe the war's impact on three people: Sally Hyde (Fonda), her hawkish husband, Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), and a paraplegic war hero, Luke Martin (Jon Voight). The film was primarily about the painful readjustment of paraplegic veteran, Luke Martin, to civilian life, and the story follows him through his gradual transition from an embittered shell to an energetic spokesman for the anti-war movement. The film won Oscars for Voight and Fonda, and the remarkable chemistry the stars generate in their roles make the relationship between Luke and Sally one of the most compelling in a Seventies film. In addition to the fine acting of Fonda and Voight, Bruce Dern's haunting portrait of a gung-ho marine shattered by actual combat experience is also splendid. "Coming Home" states a theme recurrent in the Vietnam films, that involvement in war disfranchises men from the rituals of family, marriage and sex--the war being, apparently, so tainting an experience that it robs the individual of sensuality and tenderness. "Coming Home" (in effect, coming to one's senses) permits embittered veteran Luke Martin to learn to love life again, and military wife Sally Hyde to overcome her inhibitions and experience a raised consciousness. A major contributing factor to its success is the musical score, based primarily on rock music of the Sixties, featuring songs by the Rolling Stones, Steppenwolf, and other popular groups. When government cooperation was sought to film "Coming Home" at the Long Beach Veterans Administration Hospital it was flatly refused. Not only the VA, but the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and National Guard all turned down Fonda and company. Shooting took place instead at a hospital for spinal-cord injuries in Downey, California. Only after "Coming Home" opened did the VA cautiously and unofficially approve the film. The movie was screened for a representative of the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped. This representative informed producer Jerome Hellman that it was "a very important film," the first time she had "seen a disabled person on the screen dealt with as a complete human being." [filmfactsman]
Submitted by filmfactsman (Beverly Hills, CA, USA)
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