Word: fonda
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...surface, Coming Home is the story of a love affair between the wife (Jane Fonda) of an unflinchingly patriotic Marine Corps captain (Bruce Dern) who is sent off to fight in Vietnam and a disabled and disillusioned veteran, played by Jon Voight. But beyond that, this film is about the aggression, insensitivity, and sexism; about the types of thought (or lack of it) that render these things acceptable. Although the film is set in Los Angeles in 1968, at the beginning of the Tet Offensive, it is not a specific criticism of our Vietnam policies. Rather, it attempts to prove...
Admittedly, Coming Home is a rather heavy-handed attempt to redefine such concepts as manhood, 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...
Sally Hyde, Fonda's character, is also a bit overdrawn. At the outset, she is an incredibly naive, submissive spouse to the Marine career man. She doesn't seem to have changed much since high school, where her yearbook inscription read: "What is the one thing Sally would want on a desert island? A husband." Gradually, awakened by her experience in the veteran's hospital and by the feminist roommate she moves in with, a new consciousness emerges. She sheds her prudish dresses and skirt outfits for jeans and imported shirts, becomes increasingly anti-war, and eventually falls in love...
Voight becomes unrealistically angelic. Once bitter and cynical, after he befriends Fonda--whom he had known in high school when she was a cheerleader and he a football star--and after he is released from the confines of his bed to a wheelchair, he changes. The blond-haired, bearded wonder becomes totally hip--sympathetic, concerned, committed to the anti-war movement rather than despair, and the model responsive lover. His abilities as a teacher and healer are unsurpassed--from helping Fonda achieve her first satisfying orgasm (in a surprisingly graphic love scene) to consoling the chronically depressed brother of Jane...
...ENDING of this film doesn't really work; nothing is solved. Voight, minus the bitterness and plus some tears, is basically where he 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...