| | |
Features: DVD, Widescreen, Aspect Ratio 1.85:1, Commentary
Perhaps the most powerful picture ever made about the shattering aftermath of the Vietnam War, Coming Home earned eight Academy Award nominations and three Oscars: Best Actress (Jane Fonda), Best Actor (Jon Voight) and Best Screenplay. Hailed by critics as "dazzling" (Rex Reed), "gripping" (Leonard Maltin) and "unforgettable" (Judith Crist), it is a heat-rending examination of the most critical period in our nation's history and "an uncompromising, extraordinarily moving film" (Roger Ebert). When Marine Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) leaves for Vietnam, his wife, Sally (Fonda), volunteers at a local hospital. There she meets Luke Martin (Voight), a former sergeant whose war injury has left him a paraplegic. Embittered with rage and filled with frustration, Luke finds new hope and confidence through his growing intimacy with Sally. She too discovers that their relationship has greatly transformed her feelings about life, love and the horrors of war. And when, wounded and disillusioned, Sally's husband returns home, they must each grapple with the full impact of a brutal, distant war that has changed their lives forever.
"...an uncompromising, extraordinarily moving film..." Roger Ebert
"Compelling and absorbing." Variety
Editor's Note
When Sally Hyde's (Jane Fonda) husband, a ramrod-straight marine captain, Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), is sent to Vietnam, she leaves the isolated world of the officer's quarters and begins volunteer social work at the veterans hospital. There her unthinking support of the war and her blindness to its effects are challenged by meeting the crippled men struggling to recover, psychologically as well as physically, from their time in country. Many, like Luke Martin (Jon Voight), now a paraplegic, are embittered and full of unfocused, uncontrollable rage, which he takes out on the prim, controlled Sally. Interestingly, they went to the same large high school, but she was a pretty, popular cheerleader type and he was just a guy in the back of the class. Gradually, as she changes politically (always signaled by changes in hair and fashion) and he recovers emotionally, they become friends and then lovers. This causes a sexual awakening in Sally that furthers her transformation from a repressed wife to an independent woman. Then her husband comes home.Hal Ashby's film, with its classic rock soundtrack and lush photography by Haskell Wexler, submerged its politics in a warm nostalgia, although it was made just a few years after the war ended. Still, its theme of individual transformation, both political and sexual, struck a chord with baby boomer audiences who all felt, to varying degrees, that they had done the same thing.
Plot Summary
A critically acclaimed film about the lingering wounds inflicted by the Vietnam War, this powerful drama examines the growing relationship between a woman who volunteers to help disabled vets and a bitter paraplegic under her care.
| Features | Region 1 | | Keep Case | | Single Side - Dual Layer | | Anamorphic Widescreen - 1.85 | | Letterbox - 1.85 | | Audio:
| Dolby Digital Mono - English | | Dolby Digital Mono - French | | Dolby Digital Mono - Spanish | | Additional Release Material:
| Audio Commentary: Jon Voight - Star 2. Bruce Dern - Star 3. Haskell Wexler - Director of Photography | | Featurette:
| 1. COMING BACK HOME | | 2. HAL ASHBY: A MAN OUT OF TIME |
|
|
|
| Technical Info
|
Release Information
|  | Studio: MGM |
| Release Date: 1/11/2005 |
| Running Time: 127 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1978 | | Catalog ID: 1003333 | | UPC: 00027616874825 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English, French Dubbed, Spanish Dubbed | | Available Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | Video: Color |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Oscar (1979) |  | Jon Voight, Winner, Best Actor | | Jane Fonda, Winner, Best Actress | | Nancy Dowd, et al., Winner, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly For The Screen | |
Cannes Film Festival (1978) | | Jon Voight, Winner, Best Actor | |
Golden Globe (1979) | | Jon Voight, Winner, Best Motion Picture Actor-Drama | | Jane Fonda, Winner, Best Motion Picture Actress-Drama |
|
| | Professional Reviews | Sight and Sound
"...[Fonda] has uncannily reincarnated herself in type and period..." 06/01/1978 p.191-2Variety
"...An excellent Hal Asby film which illuminates the conflicting attitudes of the Vietnam debacle....Superb cinematography..." 02/15/1978 USA Today
"...A still-affecting time-capsule movie, this was an uncommonly high-profile Hollywood effort..." 04/19/2002 p.4E Uncut
"As a meditation on the effects of war, on the scars it leaves, it's an astonishing work. The leads are uniformly excellent..." 07/01/2004 p.144 Premiere
"[D]irected with shaggy ambience by Hal Ashby." 11/01/2005 p.121 |
| |
|
|
|
