Word: derning
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Coming Home--Hollywood finds Vietnam, about ten years too late. Still, give Jane Fonda some credit for this anti-war, sensitive film. As the wife of a bonkers Army Man (brilliantly played, save for the cop-out deus ex machina, by Bruce Dern), Fonda gives one of the best performances of her rather spotty acting career. She is frustrated, repressed and lonely until she meets a crippled vet in an army hospital. That vet--played by Jon Voigt --turns her life around and brings himself to peace in the process. Voigt steals the film with a brilliant performance. Its philosophy...
...would, much to the disbelief of his companions, and much of the rest of the movie is devoted to showing why his reasons, and the assumptions behind them, are bankrupt. But the underlying question is what can we do to end the ignorance, misperceptions, and repressions--all exemplified by Dern's Marine captain character--that got us there in the first place. Those who see this as a rather dated question need only consider the initial reaction of the Veterans' Administration, which refused to cooperate in the filming after its medical director, Dr. John D. Chase, called the script...
...patriotism, and love. Activist and associate producer Bruce Gilbert, who conceived the idea for the movie along with Fonda, claims the original black and white differences between the hawkish marine and the anti-war vet were toned down. The stereotypes, however, are still very heavily drawn: the ultra-macho Dern, whose buddies' idea of a perfect party for him is "a side of beef and a case of Jack Daniels," is totally insensitive in bed, gung-ho about the war, and outraged when his wife decides to go to work (as a volunteer in the V.A. hospital) after...
...first satisfying orgasm (in a surprisingly graphic love scene) to consoling the chronically depressed brother of Jane's roommate. In the end, Voight's role as an analyst is more important than his role as a veteran. But he is too perfect, especially in the film's climax when Dern confronts his wife with his knowledge of her affair. While the background music of the Chambers Brothers' "The Time Has Come Today" gets louder and louder, the tension mounts--Dern aims his deranged look and the automatic weapon held in his shaky hands at his wife. Suddenly there...
...began--trying to tell people (this time high school kids) why the war wasn't worth it. Fonda, now liberated, goes shopping with her equally together friend, unaware of the emotional events taking place for the two men she still loves. No one answers the question of how Dern, at this point, can be helped; of how the roots of his type of violence-prone thought can be erased. He simply can't deal with his wife's affair, his own "failure" in Vietnam (he was sent home after injuring himself on the way to the shower), or the implications...