During the Vietnam War itself, Hollywood tended to shy away from making films about it, John Wayne's patriotic drama "The Green Berets" being one of the few exceptions. It was not until a few years after the withdrawal of American forces that film-makers started to take a serious look at the conflict. "Coming Home" forms part of the First Great Vietnam Cycle, coming out in the same year, 1978, as Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" and a year before Coppola's "Apocalypse Now". There was to be a second cycle of films about Vietnam, including "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket" in the late eighties and early nineties.
Unlike "The Deer Hunter" or "Apocalypse Now", "Coming Home" is entirely set in America, with no scenes of the actual conflict. It deals with what in earlier wars would have been called the "Home Front". It tells story of Sally Hyde, the wife of Bob, an officer in the Marine Corps who is away fighting in Vietnam. During her husband's absence, Sally works as a volunteer in a military hospital where she meets an old classmate, Luke Martin. Luke has also fought in Vietnam but is now paralysed after being injured in action.
Following his experiences in the war, Luke has become bitter and angry, and campaigns vehemently against America's involvement in the war. Sally and Luke rekindle their old friendship, and eventually a sexual relationship develops between them. (His injuries do not seem to have affected Luke's sexual capabilities). The character of Luke is said to have been based upon Ron Kovic, a real-life veteran whom Jane Fonda got to know while campaigning against the war. Kovic's story was to be told about a decade later in the film "Born on the Fourth of July").
Even after Hollywood started making films about Vietnam, it always had difficulties with the subject. American films on the subject have generally taken a vaguely anti-war line but, with the brave exception of Oliver Stone's "Heaven and Earth", have always approached it from an American perspective. If the Vietnamese people appear at all, it is normally either as faceless enemies or as innocent civilian victims of war.
"Coming Home" is perhaps the most America-centric of all, fatally handicapped by the quite deliberate decision not to show us anything of the country where the actual fighting was taking place. The film was doubtless intended as an anti-war statement, but it never really works as such. It never quite has the courage to take up the absolutist pacifist position which says that no cause, however ostensibly noble, is worth killing or dying for. Instead, the message that comes across is "this faraway country, of which we knew nothing, was not worth the bones of a single US Marine". In the context of Vietnam, that position might have been an arguable one, but this movie shies away from any attempt to analyse the causes of the war or the reasons why either the Americans or the Vietnamese, whether pro- or anti-Communist, were fighting.
Instead of rational analysis the film relies on emotional "war is hell" clichés. Indeed, when Bob returns from the war only slightly injured physically but traumatised psychologically, it was perhaps responsible for inventing a new cliché, the emotionally damaged Vietnam vet. Real-life soldiers suffer from psychological trauma in all wars, fictional ones only do so in wars of which the author or scriptwriter disapproves. There were doubtless many veterans of World War II who were left emotionally scarred by their experiences, but because bien-pensant opinion across the political spectrum holds that they were fighting the good fight against Fascism not too many films get made about them. (Incidentally, I wonder if this stereotyping of Vietnam veterans as psychotic mental cases actually made it more difficult for real vets to return to civilian society).
The film could perhaps have worked as an apolitical human drama, but for me it never really works on this level either. We never really understand why Sally, hitherto portrayed as a wholesome, loving all-American housewife, devoted to her husband, should have started an affair with Luke. She never seems passionately in love with him, and has no intention of leaving her husband for him. Doutbless she feels sorry for him, but sympathy and adultery are two different things. I have never agreed with those Oscars for Jane Fonda and Jon Voight, although Voight's ranting performance was the sort that always impresses the Academy, especially as he was playing a disabled character. 1978 was a rather weak year in cinema history, so great performances were thin on the ground, but I felt that "Best Actor" should have gone to Robert de Niro for "The Deer Hunter" and Best Actress to Ellen Burstyn for "Same Time, Next Year". The best acting contribution here probably comes from Bruce Dern, even though his long hair and straggly moustache makes him look more like a hippie than a Marine officer.
Of the year's two Vietnam epics, "The Deer Hunter" is by far the better. Cimino's film has its faults, but it also has its virtues, including some stunning photography and a genuine emotional power. "Coming Home", by contrast, is a dull, slow-moving soap-opera about people some of whom just happen to have fought in Vietnam. 4/10
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