Northwest Film Forum

Jane Fonda and Jon Voight won Academy Awards for their work in this Vietnam drama. Fonda stars as Sally, the prim and privileged wife of a Marine Captain who leaves for Vietnam. Left at home, Sally volunteers at a local hospital. There, among the many injured soldiers that have returned from the war, she meets Luke (Voight), an acquaintance from her school days. Once a vain jock, Luke has come home a haunted paraplegic. He gains a new lease on life through Sally and the pair grow close, gradually trapping themselves within a tragic love triangle. Unlike THE DEER HUNTER and APOCALYPSE NOW, the better known Vietnam movies which were released just months after COMING HOME, this film rejects the epic form so often appropriated for accounts of war. Ashby makes COMING HOME a time capsule of a troubled era, faithfully capturing the fashions, attitudes and tunes of the decade. The film comes with a contemporary rock soundtrack that today would cost a fortune to assemble: cuts from Hendrix, Dylan and The Beatles sit alongside an album's worth of Rolling Stones hits.