Coming Home

Hal Ashby - and the screenwriters - accomplished a wonderful thing with the film Coming Home. Here is a movie about Vietnam but it is not a war movie. It is not anti-war and it is not pro-war. Coming Home is also about love but it is not a love story. It is - quite simply - about people and their capacity for loving other people. These days I find myself growing tired of movies that are about a concept or an issue, rather than characters. While I enjoyed Slumdog Millionaire - and perhaps it is unfair of me to single that film out as an example - I was frustrated by the story's generic illustrations. Slumdog seems to say: "here is what is happening in India... look how bad it is"; while Coming Home seems to say: "here are some people... take a walk in their shoes." After all - in my opinion - there is nothing more real, nothing more true, nothing more honest, and nothing more insightful than our capacity to empathize with another person - provided that person or character seems real, true, honest, and insightful. I might even tolerate a generic illustration - so long as it is a generic illustration of a character who manifests human qualities.

Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) is one such generic illustration - as is his counterpart, Luke Martin (Jon Voight). The are each modeled after a specific group of people who were victimized by the Vietnam War, and their respective qulities, circumstances, and means of dealing with the events that unfold over the course of the film make up a truely compelling theme. Both men entered the war looking to play the hero - hungery for the glory that had been besowed upon the gerations of WWI and WWII - hoping to recapture the glory of the high school football field - but Vietnam turned them both back, having shown them the hopeless foolishness of such expectations. Of course, here are where the similarities end. Luke Martin comes back from the war and - though he may have been a hero - he has lost the use of his legs. On the other hand, Bob Hyde never got to play the hero but he has learned that many of the real heros will never be coming home. What is more, they each deal with their shattered expectations in different ways, and the reasons for their respective reactions provide us with a beautiful insight.

Though he struggles mightily at first, Luke learns to welcome people into his life, and love provides him with a means of continuing on. Luke may have started out as a misled youth, but in the end, his adulthood takes root in the lasting virtues of his love for his fellow man. Bob Hyde is quite a different person. Bob has never valued anything but combat. He has never even given a thought to his own wife's pleasure. I doubt very much that his "fellow man" means anything to Bob. There is certainly nothing that is more important to him than his military career. Of course, when that career is revealed as an outright sham, it is little wonder that Bob has no reason left to live.

I would love to get into all kinds of other things that are going on in Coming Home. I have almost totally neglected Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda), and as the main character she is arguably the most important. In many ways she is us. I know that hardly does her justice but I think that I have probably rambled on enough already. Anyway, I would actually welcome a debate on how I have contrasted Coming Home and Slumdog Millionaire. I kind of went with my gut on that one and I would be interested to know if anyone agrees.