Movie: Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978)
I had seen this film before, but didn't remember anything from it. Many years ago, I wrote on this blog that I prefer Being There over it. Not sure what I was thinking; this is clearly the superior film. As seems to be his wont, Hal Ashby loses control over the plot at certain points (no need to involve the FBI in this), but his sensitive and subversive approach worked incredibly well for me. The film is angry about the Vietnam War and about the American cultural values that made it possible, but has sympathy for individuals, who shaped by those values are willing to fight and die for them. It evokes how hard it must have been to be against the war (and to be a dissenter in general), not so much from a political, but from a psychological point of view.
In its opening pre-credit scene it puts Jon Voight, playing paralyzed vet Luke Martin, in a room with wounded real Vietnam-veterans reflecting on their war experiences. Voight is a silent witness to their conversation dominated by a veteran who explains why he doesn't regret going to Vietnam and why he'd do it again. The film respects his point of view, but immediately undercuts it during its credit sequence. Set to The Rolling Stones' Out of Time, we see Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) doing running exercises to prepare for his deployment to Vietnam. Those scenes, with many shots focusing on the movement of his legs, are intercut with scenes from a veteran hospital with wounded ex-soldiers, sitting in wheelchairs, using crutches, learning to walk with prosthetics. After Dern goes to war, his wife Sally (Jane Fonda) decides to volunteer for the local military hospital, preparing food, helping with exercises and moving wheelchaired veterans around. The next time we meet her husband, is in Hong Kong where she is visiting him on his 'R&R' (rest and recuperation). He arrives at the airport sitting comfortably in a riksha, moved forward by some poor Asian kid. The contrast with the wheelchairs is obvious as is the contempt Ashby has for the American's arrogantly laconic attitude towards the Vietnam war and the 'East' as a whole.
The film ends in high school gym where Luke in a passionate, emotional speech calls upon the students to not go to Vietnam, to not enlist in the army, explaining that there is nothing heroic about killing for your country. You could perhaps argue that it's a weakness of the film to end on such a preachy, if fully correct, note. But the scene also works as an intellectual breakthrough for Luke, who is throughout the film trying to align his thoughts and feelings about the war with his thoughts and feelings about America and her ideals and promises. Besides, if the film in the end has a 'message' it is much more subtle than 'the Vietnam War is bad and opposed to America's norms and values'. The main character in the film is Sally. She experiences the biggest change in the film, transforming from a dutiful housewife into an independent, confident woman who discovers both her professional talents and her sexual desire while her husband is away. In doing so, the film connects the anti-war efforts to the women liberation movement, and sees both as part of the same fight for progressive ideals.
