Jane Fonda’s Coming Home

Michael Wescott

In the five years following the American withdrawal

from Vietnam in 1973, the war was ignored by Hollywood.

Despite the success of the grim documentary Hearts and Minds

in 1975, fictional accounts of Vietnam were unforthcoming.

As noted by scholar Rick Berg, “The war’s loss was marked by

its absence from the marketplace.”1 Suddenly, in 1978, there

began a spate of films dealing with America’s involvement in

Vietnam which has continued unabated to this day, though the

attitudes have changed. These early Vietnam films of 1978

dealt not with the war itself, but with the soldiers that

fought the war, and the war’s effect on them and American

society. In doing so, they unanimously and overtly conveyed

a sense that the war was a terrible event that profoundly

scarred the participants. Two of these films, The Deer Hunter

and Coming Home, were both huge commercial and critical

successes in 1978, signaling that creative filmmakers and

1 “Losing Vietnam: Covering the War in an Age of Technology.” Cultural Critique, No. 3, American Representations of Vietnam (Spring, 1986).

adventurous Hollywood studios were ready to digest and

interpret the war, and that the American public was ready to

see the results. These films brought the notion of the

damaged Vietnam vet sharply into the national discourse, and

set the stage for Vietnam films for the next several years.

This is particularly true of Coming Home, the subject of

this paper.

The idea for the film originated with Jane Fonda, a

well-known anti-war activist who had raised the ire of many

patriotic Americans by visiting Hanoi in 1972, an action

seen as galling at best, treasonous at worst. Having met

numerous disabled veterans, Fonda had been impressed by a

remark from one of them that “I’ve lost my body, but I’ve

gained my mind.”2 She wanted to make a film about the home

front and about the veterans who came back from the war. As

recalled by her film production partner, fellow anti-war

activist Bruce Gilbert, they set out to “re-define what

manhood and patriotism meant.”3 Fonda would play a woman

2 Keith Honeycutt. “The Five-Year Struggle to Make ‘Coming Home’.” The New York Times, February 19, 19783 Ibid.

torn between her patriotic, pro-war husband and a disabled,

anti-war veteran. She enlisted screenwriter Waldo Salt and

producer Jerome Hellman, both of whom had worked on the

controversial Midnight Cowboy in 1969. They also enlisted that

film’s director, John Schlesinger, but he soon bowed out,

believing that being British, he could not bring a proper

perspective to the story.

To replace him they enlisted maverick director Hal

Ashby, known for a string of superb films including cult

favorite Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, and the Woody Guthrie

“bio-pic” Bound for Glory. Part of the renaissance of American

auteur directors of the 1970s that included Martin Scorsese,

Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola, Ashby was a Mormon

who left Utah for California soon after his father committed

suicide. In his mid-teens, Ashby had found the body. He got

a job mimeographing scripts at a Hollywood studio, and

eventually learned to be a film editor, winning a 1969

Academy Award for editing The Heat Of The Night. Already 40

years old, he made his directorial debut the next year with

The Landlord, to rapturous reviews. His documentary-like,

cinéma vérité style was perfect for Coming Home, a film meant to

be an unflinching portrayal of the realities of Vietnam

veterans.

Meanwhile, Waldo Scott spent more than a year

researching his script, recording hundreds of hours of

interviews with disabled Vietnam vets. Jon Voight was tapped

to play Captain Bob Hyde, but when more famous actors passed

on the part of the paraplegic vet, Voight moved to that role

and Bruce Dern came aboard to play the Captain. Voight, who

would win an Oscar for his performance, was considered a

risky choice. Despite a huge hit early in his career (in

Midnight Cowboy opposite Dustin Hoffman), Voight had failed to

capitalize on his success and, by the mid-70s, was widely

regarded as having squandered his career. Jane Fonda

resisted this choice until she finally saw some early rushes

of the film and decided that he was perfect for the role.

The film’s participants set, shooting began at Rancho Los

Amigos, a spinal-injury clinic in Downey, California. The

V.A. hospital in Long Beach had declined cooperation when

its chief medical director vehemently denounced the script.

The film opens with a very effective scene in which

Voight is filmed with actual disabled vets, shooting pool in

the recreation room of the hospital. This blend of fact and

fiction sets the stage for the naturalistic, documentary

style of the entire film. As they talk about the war and

their wounds, one of the vets says that if he could, he

would go back to Vietnam and fight some more. This is met

with absolute incredulity by the rest of the vets, but one

of them attempts to give the statement a perceptive

psychological analysis, noting that “What happened to us is

a waste that some of us can’t live with … (we) need to

justify what we did … to justify being paralyzed.” In other

words, knowing that the war was wrong (to put it bluntly),

some of the vets find it hard to live with their wounds,

hard to live with the thought that it was for nothing, or

worse than nothing – for an immoral cause. This scene makes

it clear that this will be an anti-war film, the implication

being that most vets, in retrospect, take a dim view of

America’s role in Vietnam. These vets, who have lost limbs

(and have seen others lose more) in Vietnam, give the anti-

war sentiment an authenticity that liberal Hollywood actors

and producers could not, similar to the role Vietnam Vets

Against the War played in the anti-war movement.

The opening credits follow this scene, and Captain Hyde

is seen jogging around a military base. The Rolling Stones’

“Out of Time” plays, a song about a girl who is being left

behind due to her conservative ways: “You’re out of touch my

baby / my poor, old-fashioned baby.” Most reviewers have

assumed that this is meant to comment on Captain Hyde, seen

as old-fashioned because of his pro-military views. Much has

been made of the rock’n’roll soundtrack to Coming Home;

extensive use is made of almost twenty different songs from

the late 1960s (most of them hits in 1968), several by the

Rolling Stones (the only duplicated group), and most played

in their entirety. Despite the misgivings of the studio

executives, Ashby was determined to use the songs. As he

told Kirk Honeycutt of The New York Times, “’My thought … was

that music played a very important part during this period.

Also, I was concerned that with a picture this strong, a

conventional score might make it soap-operaish.’”4 The

success of this strategy within this film itself is open to

question. Most of the time, the songs seem to have no direct

relationship to the action on screen, as if, Honeycutt

notes, “a radio were switched on throughout the movie.” Yet

on a few occasions, the attempt at commentary is obvious.

For instance, after Billy’s sister visits him in the mental

ward and perceives that he is drugged, she describes him to

Sally as a “miracle of modern medicine.” Over much of this

scene, Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” is heard, a song

explicitly about a psychedelic drug experience. In another

instance, the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” is

heard as Captain Hyde describes wartime atrocities. And

during the final scene, Tim Buckley’s “Once I Was” is heard

as Captain Hyde sheds his uniform, with the lyrics “Once I

was a soldier…” In these instances, the correlation is so

obvious that even if they were unintended, which is

doubtful, the audience cannot help but infer a connection.

Thus when the choice of song is abstract and seemingly 4 “The Five-Year Struggle to Make ‘Coming Home’”. February 19, 1978.

unrelated to the action, like The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” over

several scenes, the effect is disconcerting. However, the

rock’n’roll device was very unusual at the time and brought

additional attention to the film, and helped solidify the

opinion that this was a unique film. Also, the influence of

this device has been seen (heard) in many Vietnam films

since then, including most notably Apocalypse Now (1979), and

has become de rigueur for almost any film about the 60s,

including, most famously, The Big Chill (1984). In this respect,

Ashby was quite ahead of his time.

Soon, the footage of Hyde’s exercise is intercut with

footage of the exercise regimens of the disabled vets,

contrasting the two in what is almost a before-and-after

effect, for all that separates Hyde from his disabled

brethren is combat in Vietnam. Next, Hyde is seen with his

fellow Marine and good friend Dink on the firing range, and

they are very excited by the prospect of going to war. When

the subject turns to Hyde’s wife, Sally, he says that she

does not “understand” the war, but “accepts” his service, a

stereotypical view of military wives in wartime. Of course,

the ensuing events will be an education for Sally, and the

more she “understands” the war (in terms of its horrific

physical and mental costs for participating human beings),

the less she will accept it.

We soon meet Sally and Dink’s girlfriend, Vy, as the

two couples share a drink soon before the Marines’

departure. Sally and Vy have never met, but will soon become

close friends. After Hyde and Dink leave for Vietnam,

neither woman wants to be alone and Vy invites Sally to her

place for a drink. As they walk in, “The Star-Spangled

Banner” is playing on the television as the station signs

off, but when Vy moves to switch it off, Sally asks her to

leave it on until the end of the song. This is meant to

illustrate Sally’s simple but genuine patriotism, though at

least one critic has cringed at this scene, writing that

such “moments of obvious shorthand … belie the overall

intelligence of the film.”5 During their conversation, the

Marines are obliquely criticized when Sally complains that

5 Jeremy Heilman. “Coming Home (Hal Ashby) 1978.” http://moviemartyr.com/1978/cominghome.htm. (Accessed December 10, 2005).

she must move out of military housing now that her husband

has left for Vietnam, “You know what they say, ‘if the

Marines wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued

you one.’” The implication is that the military is a cold

institution, unconcerned with anything outside of its

central mission of war, and that such human concerns as

marriage are entirely peripheral. This attitude is expanded

upon as Vy expresses bitterness at the way her brother,

Billy, has come home from Vietnam mentally disturbed, and

that the doctors in the psychology ward cannot give a

prognosis or even treat him effectively. She says that he

was the star of the family, having inherited all of the

brains and personality. “Then he was drafted,” she says, as

if his fate had been sealed the moment he was chosen to go

to Vietnam.

In the following scenes, we see Luke Martin for the

first time since the opening pool-room scene, face-down on a

gurney which he maneuvers with a cane, begging for a bath

from one of the doctors and complaining that his colostomy

bag is full. The nurses and doctors are all busy with other

patients, and these scenes convey the sense that the V.A. is

overwhelmed by the number of extremely disfigured patients.

Soon, Sally enters the hospital and collides with Luke,

sending his cane and colostomy bag to the floor. Dazed,

Sally bends to pick up the bag, realizing its contents only

after she has been soiled by them. Luke calmly asks for his

cane, but upon receiving it he bursts with fury, smashing

everything within reach and screaming about his lack of

attention in the hospital. He cries, if they won’t even

bathe him or keep his bag emptied, why don’t they just let

him go? Soon he has been sedated with thorizine and strapped

to his bed.

Sally had come to the hospital to volunteer, and

despite her traumatic experience with Luke, she doesn’t

change her mind. As she soon tells Vy, she enjoys the work,

feeling that she has made herself useful, and she likes

meeting many different kinds of people, even, shockingly, a

man with an earring. Her naїveté is also exposed by the fact

that she is rendered mute by mild sexual taunts from the

patients. As the film progresses, her naїveté will be lost

in tandem with her acceptance of the war.

Luke is next seen with his arms strapped to his bed,

being fed by the doctor. He naturally resents this situation

and refuses to eat, and this creates a mess as the food and

milk he rejects winds up on his face. The doctor does not

clean the mess before he leaves, presumably to teach Luke a

lesson. Soon Sally visits his room and cleans him off. We

learn that she had gone to high school with Luke, and that

he vaguely remembers her due to the fact that she was a

cheerleader, and because her maiden name being Sally Bender,

her nickname in school had been “Bender Over.” She is

shocked by this revelation, but seems even more surprised by

Luke response to being told that her husband is in Vietnam:

“Poor bastard!” As she is leaving, Luke asks her to release

the straps confining him. She refuses due to lack of

authorization, but is clearly torn, and in her hesitation it

seems as if she is about to acquiesce when the doctor comes

in and does it himself. Luke senses that she was about to

give in, and this ingratiates her to him. Subsequently, Luke

sometimes tries to take his bitterness out on Sally during

her hospital rounds, but Sally refuses to be intimidated,

confronting him with the unacceptability of his behavior.

This seems to be refreshing for Luke, and they grow fond of

each other.

Shortly thereafter, Luke gets his wheelchair, and his

mood seems to lighten. With an extremely athletic upper

body, Luke is able to execute fancy maneuvers with the chair

(legend has it that like Marlon Brando for The Men (1950),

Voight had spent months in a wheelchair in preparation for

his role as a paraplegic, so much that his leg muscles

actually atrophied and he required special training to

regain their full use). He is seen smiling consistently for

the first time in the film, and Sally, too, is thrilled to

see him happier. His good mood increases when she invites

him to dinner. Yet before the dinner scene is an important

sequence in which Sally, Luke, Vy and her brother Billy

attempt to have a picnic, and Billy is encouraged to play

the guitar he is holding. Only a few bars into a song, he

breaks down sobbing for no apparent reason. Luke is seen

with a look of profound understanding on his face as he

moves to hold Billy and comfort him. Luke’s expression seems

to say that whatever is haunting Billy, and has landed him

in the psycho ward, can be understood only by a fellow

veteran of the war. Sally is moved by the incident, telling

Luke several times that she feels his presence “really

helped” Billy, but it puts Luke in a sour mood, lifted only

when he realizes that he is close to spoiling their dinner

plans. By the end of dinner, their rapport has grown to the

point that Luke attempts to kiss her as they are parting, an

attempt that is only lightly and half-heartedly rebuffed.

Luke’s sense of rejection will grow, however, as Sally

receives a letter informing her of her husband’s impending

R&R in Hong Kong. With surprising insensitivity, she

excitedly tells Luke about her plans to meet her husband

there. He is clearly very disappointed by the news and

dejectedly ceases conversation after hearing it. This is a

feeling that Sally will soon share as she meets her husband

and his friend Dink in Hong Kong, only to find them

extremely high-strung and out-of-sorts, speaking cryptically

or staring blankly into space. As Hyde recounts some of the

horrors of war, Sally attempts to comfort him physically,

only to be rejected.

Meanwhile, The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”

is heard on the soundtrack, getting louder and louder. The

film cuts back to the United States, where Billy has again

abandoned his guitar mid-song and has locked himself in a

corner of the hospital. Numerous patients, watching him

through a window, attempt to talk him into unlocking the

door and coming out, but as the song reaches its crescendo,

Billy commits suicide by using a syringe to shoot an air

bubble into his veins. Depicted unflinchingly, the death is

quick but violent, with a massive convulsion as the embolism

reaches his heart. Though death is actually extremely

unlikely using this method (medically speaking), the scene

is extremely effective due to the matter-of-fact style of

the director and very convincing acting, and it is traumatic

for the viewer.

Arriving moments later, Luke is profoundly upset by the

suicide, and he lays the blame squarely with the military

establishment (just as the viewer is intended to) by closing

the gates of the U.S.M.C. Recruit Depot F.M.F., chaining

them shut and locking himself to the gate for good measure.

To our knowledge, it is his first act of civil disobedience

following the war. Following this, Luke is interviewed on

television, an interview which Sally sees. Unlike her

distant husband, Luke seems articulate and in touch with his

feelings. This seems to solidify her feeling for Luke, for

we next see them preparing to have sex. The scene is shot in

an extremely naturalistic, un-stylized manner, and there was

some care taken to be medically accurate: when Sally asks

him is he can feel the intercourse, he replies, “No, but I

can see it.” Later, he performs cunnilingus, and Sally

experiences her first orgasm. Her bond with Luke has

apparently transcended her bond with her husband, a result

of Luke’s command over his circumstances in contrast to her

self-absorbed, emotionally distant husband.

As their relationship grows, however, there is an

unknown intrusion; due to his antics at the U.S.M.C. gate,

Luke has been placed under surveillance. When Captain Hyde

returns soon thereafter with a leg wound, the audience is

left to wonder whether or not he is aware of the affair. He

drinks heavily at his homecoming, and resists questions

about his leg wound. Finally, he tells Sally and Vy that as

he was walking to the shower, he accidentally shot himself.

Vy innocently remarks, “Dink should have thought of that.”

At this attempt at humor Hyde explodes with rage, extremely

sensitive to an inferred insinuation that he might have

inflicted the wound on purpose. He storms out of the house,

only to return in the middle of the night with several

Marine drinking buddies, who proceed to mildly trash the

house. The gulf between Sally and her husband has opened

wider.

Next, our suspense over Hyde’s knowledge of the affair

is lifted when Hyde confronts Luke matter-of-factly, without

any apparent anger. By the time Hyde reaches home, however,

he is in a rage again, and Luke has warned Sally that

they’ve been found out. Back home, Hyde’s confrontation with

Sally turns ugly when he picks up a gun, made even more

menacing by the presence of a bayonet. He screams “I do not

belong in this house, and they’re saying that I don’t belong

over there.” This is his sense of displacement, as the two

things that made sense to him, his marriage and his military

career, have been shattered.

In the least convincing scene of the film, Luke shows

up and tries to talk him down. Luke assures Hyde that he’s

“been there, man,” but if Hyde will let her, Sally can heal

him, just as she healed Luke. At one point Hyde seems to be

transported back to Vietnam, and he snarls that Sally is a

“slope cunt.” With this vulgar epithet, both racial and

sexual, our regard for Hyde is at an all-time low. The

audience is meant to equate Hyde with everything that is

seen (by anti-war observers) to be wrong with America’s

involvement in Vietnam, from racism to disregard for

civilians. This scene is the film at its least subtle;

apparently, Hyde was meant to be somewhat sympathetic, in

order to provide some balance to the film’s obvious anti-war

stance. Incredibly, as the film was originally written with

an even more disturbed Hyde, snapping and taking sniper

shots at drivers on the freeway. It is fortunate that this

was seen by the filmmakers to be over the top, though they

still manage to demonize the character excessively.

Finally, Luke tells him, “I’m not the enemy – the enemy

is the fucking war. But you don’t want to kill anybody here,

you have enough ghosts to carry around.” Again, as with

Billy, only a fellow vet can understand the “ghosts” of

service in Vietnam. Hyde calms down and abandons his weapon,

weeping in his wife’s arms. Luke disarms the rifle and

leaves them.

The final set of sequences find Hyde receiving his

medal for the leg wound; he stands in stony silence as a

heroic, false account of his wound is read and the prize is

bestowed. Cut to a high school assembly where a pro-war

Sergeant and Luke have been invited to give their opposing

views. Voight improvised the scene for an hour, an effort

that was cut to only a few lines in the final film, but that

is generally regarded as the finest acting of the film. He

tells the students that he has killed for his country, but

that he simply doesn’t “feel good about it … because there’s

not enough reason for it.” Furthermore, he says that he did

some things over there “I find fucking hard to live with.”

Written words cannot convey the power of the scene, filled

with long silences and choked sobs. These scenes are

juxtaposed with Captain Hyde shedding his uniform after he

has received his medal, and running naked toward the sea. In

doing so, he is metaphorically and literally shedding his

old identity, and cleansing himself in the water. Finally,

the films ends with a mundane scene, Sally and Vy grocery

shopping, then the final credits as “Out of Time” is played

again, ostensibly bringing the film full circle.

Many have seen Hyde’s final moments as uncertain, for

we cannot be sure whether this is a psychological ritual or

a suicide (or both). As Vincent Canby notes in his negative

review for The New York Times, two suicides are “one too many

for anything except Shakespeare.”6 Ron Kovic, whose Born on

the Fourth of July would be filmed several years later, is quoted

by Peter McInerney as scornfully remarking that he “didn’t

know any vets ‘who committed suicide by going skinny dipping

6 February 19, 1978

in the ocean.’”7 Yet the parallel with Luke is made clear by

the film editing, for while Luke is able to come to terms

with his disability and talk about his role in Vietnam, Hyde

is cannot. His final effort to cleanse himself also,

apparently (necessarily?), ends his life. McInerney notes

that “there may be a mimetic integrity in this uncertain

ending that we should appreciate. For like the war itself,

Coming Home is a powerful drama which ends ambiguously, an

experience that is hard to figure out.” Like the war itself,

and America’s attempts to understand it.

Though released in early 1978 to mixed reviews, the

film was a hit with the public and garnered numerous Academy

Award nominations. That year, it and another powerful

Vietnam film, Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, swept the

Oscars. Voight and Fonda both won Oscars for their acting,

and the film won an Oscar for its screenplay. Best Picture

and Best Director, among other awards, were won by The Deer

Hunter and Cimino. Interestingly, that film was criticized

by many for a supposed right-wing slant (depicting the North7 “Apocalypse Then: Hollywood Looks Back at Vietnam.” Film Quarterly,Vol. 33, No. 2 (Winter, 1979-80).

Vietnamese captors as monstrous psychopaths), and one

wonders if splitting the awards between the two films was an

attempt by the Academy at balance. That said, the horrific

depictions of war and its effects on a group of working-

class friends in Pennsylvania (and DeNiro’s refusal to shoot

the deer in the end, having seen enough death) gives The Deer

Hunter a distinct anti-war feeling as well.

Viewed from today’s perspective, the film, despite the

superb acting and its unusual style, comes across as

pedantic and somewhat overwrought. Knowing that an attempt

was made to tone down Hyde’s unlikable character makes it

all the more remarkable that he remains such a one-

dimensional figure. This, and the unlikely confrontation

among Hyde, Sally, and Luke, are serious flaws in the film.

There is absolutely no available sympathy for the pro-war

characters. In addition, the presence of Fonda in the film

certainly alienated a large segment of the population, for

there were many who took a dim view of “Hanoi Jane” and

would never, ever go to see a Jane Fonda movie again. Thus,

Coming Home was likely preaching to the converted, so to

speak. Thus, on many levels, the film must be viewed a

failure. Yet it was an extremely influential film, on the

vanguard of Hollywood’s post-war fascination with Vietnam,

and it certainly touched a nerve with a public that was

ready to examine the Vietnam War in terms of its soldiers

and their problematic re-acclimation to American society.

While the film can be easily criticized for its lack of

subtlety, one could just as easily counter that the film

simply wears its heart on its sleeve, and that its sincerity

is a virtue, given a powerful voice by the considerable

talents of the actors, writers, and director.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rick Berg. “Losing Vietnam: Covering the War in an Age of

Technology.” Cultural Critique, No. 3 (American

Representations of Vietnam), Spring, 1986

Peter Biskind. Easy Riders and Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-

Rock’n’Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York: Simon &

Schuster, 1998.

Vincent Canby. “Hollywood Focuses on Vietnam at Last.” The

New York Times, February 19, 1978.

Jeremy Heilman. “Coming Home (Hal Ashby) 1978.”

http://moviemartyr.com/1978/cominghome.htm. (accessed

December 10, 2005).

Kirk Honeycutt. “The Five-Year Struggle to Make ‘Coming

Home’”. The New York Times, February 19, 1978.

Peter McInerney. Film Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Winter, 1979-

1980).