Why it’s a left-wing film

“Coming Home” was the first film produced under Jane Fonda’s terribly important-sounding production shingle, IPC Films or, Indochina Peace Campaign. She was inspired in part by her friend Ron Kovic, a Vietnam Veteran turned anti-war activist who would later be the subject of his own biopic, Oliver Stone’s “Born on the 4th of July.” Set in 1968 and focusing primarily on three veterans and their personal and emotional struggles after returning home from the war, this well-produced, well-directed and brilliantly acted drama nonetheless aids and abets the left’s monstrous view of the American fighting man and does its part in cementing the unfair stereotype of the Vietnam Vet as victim, dupe, war criminal, crazy and any or all of the above.  

Director Hal Ashby immediately sets his theme in place during the opening scene where a half dozen or so wounded vets sit around a pool table in a Veteran’s hospital drinking beer and debating the war. Quite deliberately, the lone man defending America’s decision to defend our South Vietnamese allies from brutal communist aggressors in the North, is thoroughly drowned out by the “moral authority” of the others (as Jon Voight’s Luke silently listens on). In the end, all voices are quieted by the Veteran who speaks film’s real message, how Vietnam Vets must learn to live with what they did over there.

Luke is a Marine who returned from the war a paraplegic and a bitterly angry one at that. Like Ron Kovic, he went to war for God and country and came back disillusioned and haunted by what he saw and did. Eventually he’s able to reenter the world thanks mainly to a tender love affair he engages in with Sally (Fonda), a conservative  militarywife married to the chauvinistic Bob (Bruce Dern), a Marine officer who’s just left for his own tour in Vietnam. Luke’s anger over his war experience soon turns into activism. He vows to stop as many young men as he can from making the same mistake he did, going so far as to chain himself to the front gate of a Marine base.

Though Bob was eager to fight for his county, upon this dedicated and career military officer’s return, he too is haunted, not only from watching his men commit heinous war crimes, but also that a military more interested in creating heroes than actually being heroic pins a medal on him for accidentally shooting himself — the humiliating reason he was sent home. Military Intelligence finally pushes Bob over the edge by informing him of the affair his wife had with Luke. The military’s insidious rationale for dropping this grenade into Bob’s life is Luke’s anti-war stance. As if shooting himself and Sally’s infidelity weren’t bad enough, the military is now questioning Bob’s patriotism because of his wife’s association with a radical. Stripped of everything he once thought he was — husband, patriot, warrior — Bob suffers flashbacks and becomes violent. But before he can hurt anyone, he drowns himself in the Pacific Ocean.

Bill Munson (Robert Carradine) was in Vietnam for only two weeks, but for reasons that don’t need explaining he came back completely out of his mind and also ends up committing suicide. 

Even though there are as many as 2.5 million Veterans who served “in country” in Vietnam, “Coming Home” refuses to introduce us to a single one who can make a moral case for the war, who believes he fought for the important cause of keeping the South free from communist rule or who didn’t psychologically crack up upon his return. Not to take away from or to dismiss in any way the obvious difficulties all Veterans face upon returning from battle, it’s just a fact that almost all of our Vietnam Veterans came home, kissed their wives, hugged their kids, and then quietly worked through their problems as they successfully slipped back into the slipstream of a productive American life. And yet, though obviously untrue, through films like “Coming Home”, the vision Hollywood has painted of the mentally unstable, disillusioned, and dangerous Vietnam Veteran is so strong that it’s the first that comes to mind. The word defamation doesn’t really begin to cover it.

Of course, this is all part of the agenda, something we see even today; pretending to sympathize with the Veteran even as you turn him into a terrible symbol and stereotype in order to further a political cause.

Furthermore, “Coming Home” was made a couple of years after the April, 1975 fall of Saigon. The horrors that the defenders of the war had warned would occur if the anti-war movement won the day (including, by the way, John Wayne’s “Green Berets”) had and were coming true during the film’s production. But “Coming Home” is its own piece of re-education. Though set in 1968, there’s still an elephant in the room Fonda and company refuse to acknowledge.

Like Korea, militarily Vietnam was a partial victory. North Korea is a communist hell hole today but our intervention there likely saved untold millions of lives in the South and most certainly saved our allies from the brutal fate that comes with everyday life under Kim Jon-il. Vietnam could have ended in the exact same way. In 1973 the military conflict came to an end with a peace treaty signed between the North and South. America pulled all of our troops out, the fighting came to an end, and like South Korea, South Vietnam could’ve defended itself indefinitely had we kept the aid flowing, which in 1973 was $2.8 billion a year but was cut dramatically the following year.

Unfortunately, after President Nixon resigned in disgrace in late 1974, anti-war Democrats promising to end all aid to non-Communist Indochina took control of Congress in January of 1975 and one of their first acts was to ignore President Ford’s desperate pleas for the increase in aid necessary to save an increasingly beleaguered South Vietnam and Cambodia. Needing spare parts, ammunition, and tactical weapons to defend themselves, in violation of the Paris Peace Accords which promised our allies “unlimited military replacement aid,” Congress sent an unmistakable signal with a 189-49 vote against additional military aid to both Cambodia and South Vietnam.   

Within weeks an emboldened North Vietnam swept into the South and on April 30th Saigon fell — just thirteen days after Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge took control of Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

As a direct result, between the re-education camps in South Vietnam and the Killing Fields of Cambodia, it’s been estimated that over 3 million innocent people were massacred in what’s been called the Cambodian Holocaust — and “Coming Home” is a Cambodian Holocaust denier, a film set in 1968 that argues — as though millions weren’t dead as a consequence — that opponents of the war were right all along and that every nightmare scenario argued by those in support of the war (in 1968) hadn’t been fully realized … and then some.

The fact that Fonda and her then-husband Tom Hayden vigorously campaigned to turn public opinion against the post-war aid explains a lot.  And it’s worth noting that Jon Voight’s politics have matured considerably since 1978 and that today, during our present war, he has openly and selflessly supported both the cause and the men and women fighting for it in a Hollywood climate where such things can damage a career.

Why it’s a great film

First off, let’s give “Coming Home,” and that era of Hollywood as a whole, credit for not making anti-war films while we were still fighting the war in Vietnam. What today’s Hollywood has done (and continues to do) with at least a dozen box-office flops that, by design, attempt to undermine our country and troops in a time of war is at best traitorous and at worst the enabling of evil. No matter how dishonest and unfair, it’s one thing to create this kind of propaganda after a war and something entirely different to do it during.  Jane Fonda will likely end up in Hell but not for making “Coming Home.” I can’t say the same for Paul Haggis, Brian DePalma, Kimberly Peirce, Robert Redford, and all the rest.

Creatively, within the context of the world created by Ashby, Fonda, Voight and Dern, “Coming Home” is a home run. While the story has some blatantly political moments, they fit as a whole because the individual characters are well drawn and sympathetic. What they do and say, how they change and grow, makes sense and while you have to credit a solid and well-structured script, it’s three astonishingly good central performances that really pull it off.

Both Fonda and Voight won much-deserved Oscars for their work here and it’s a testament to Fonda’s abilities as an actress that once she arrives in character you completely forget what an appalling human being she is. Voight’s just as impressive as Luke, effortlessly and convincingly taking his character from embittered and selfish to someone ready to make peace the world and more importantly, with himself. Finally, there’s Bruce Dern, who plays a thoroughly unlikable character who takes over the third act of the story and in doing so earns so much of your sympathy that his Norman Maine finale is truly heartbreaking.

Wisely, the film mostly avoids melodrama by turning in unexpected directions. You expect the story to cut from Luke chaining himself to the Marine base to him leading a fiery anti-war protest but life doesn’t work that way and wisely the film doesn’t either. It’s a nice touch that Luke’s as surprised by his act of protest as we are and also a nice surprise that Sally and Luke both understand that she’ll go back to Bob when he returns, thus avoiding all the nonsense that usually accompanies such cinematic scenarios.

The great Hal Ashby

Best of all, these are real characters. The film itself might be propaganda but the players are given a depth and humanity that makes them more than just symbols or simple anti-war pawns. Obviously, it helps that you have talented and mature actors playing these roles, but unlike today’s sinister portrayal of our troops as unstable (“Hurt Locker’), dangerous (“Redacted,” “In the Valley of Elah”), and dupes (“Stop Loss,” “Lions for Lambs”), Luke, Bob, and Sally are real people; human, complicated, and ultimately sympathetic.

And the story itself is a good and compelling one. You like and root and want to know what will happen to the characters and the credit for keeping all the necessary plates spinning to pull that off goes to Hal Ashby, one of the few directors capable of creating character-driven pieces that hold your attention. Set in San Diego, the film also looks great, thanks to legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler who recreates 1968 in such a convincing way that I frequently forget the film was made a decade later. Finally, there’s an almost continuous soundtrack of music from the era, from Dylan to the Rolling Stones, that’s second-to-none.  

I’ve said more than once that if today’s leftist filmmakers had half as much talent as their political counterparts of the late 60s and early 70s, the Iraqi people would be screwed because present-day Hollywood’s wicked cinematic attempts to embarrass the United States into abandoning 25 million innocent Iraqis to death squads and terrorists might’ve hit their mark. And when I say that, “Coming Home” is the example foremost in my mind. 

What’s not on the list

WALL-E (2008) – Charles Johnson’s essay went a long way toward changing my mind about the film. Not completely, but just enough not to rank it here.

Three Kings (1999) – I didn’t leave George Clooney, George Clooney left me! What you essentially have here is a neo-con argument criticizing a President named Bush for abandoning the Iraqi people to violent madmen after a Gulf War. Yeah, it’s the first Gulf War and the first Bush, but the humanitarian plea is the same. If there’s better piece of evidence that Leftist Hollywood is more interested in criticizing America than the innocent people of Iraq, the fact that this same argument was never once made on film during the Iraq War (in fact, just the opposite was made) closes that case forever.

Wall Street (1987) – Not an indictment of capitalism or even Wall Street itself, just the people who break the laws. The characters played by Hal Holbrook and Terence Stamp represent the good in the system as much as Michael Douglas represents the bad. In the end, the system works and Gekko and Bud go to jail. Leftists complained that director Oliver Stone (the son of a stock broker) didn’t go far enough in condemning Wall Street, and that’s a credible complaint from their wrong-headed point of view.

A look at Carradine’s resume is a look at an actor who loved to work, relentlessly searched out paychecks, or both. My guess is that genetics might have played a part. His old man, John Carradine, has a list of credits longer than the end titles of a Michael Bay movie.

There are stories about David Carradine. Plenty of them. And if today’s reports prove true — if he indeed did hang himself in some Bangkok hotel room, well, obviously there was some bad news, personal demons, or a toxic mixture of both. Whatever it was, I’m not interested in hearing the story or passing it along. Unless it’s in self-defense, demystifying movie stars borders on the profane in this house.

Whatever it was, I hope he’s found peace.

And I hope that in life he found some peace in knowing he had achieved artistic immortality playing Woody Guthrie in Hal Ashby’s 1976 “Bound for Glory,” one of the finest bio-pics ever produced, thanks mainly to Carradine’s Oscar-worthy performance. (He did win a Golden Globe.)

At 147 minutes, “Bound for Glory” must’ve looked awfully difficult to pull off on paper. Essentially, it’s a character study covering just a few years in the life of a complicated, difficult, and frequently unlikable man. Thanks to Ashby’s direction, the best of his career, and Haskell Wexler’s Oscar-winning cinematography, “Glory” hits in all the places an actor can’t, but this is also the kind of film where the central performance can make or break, and Carradine makes it, and then some.

Thanks to a real screen presence and a quiet, understated performance, Carradine carries the film all on his own thin, angular frame. He inhabits most every scene and quickly makes you forget all that “Grasshopper” stuff. His Woody Guthrie is mostly silent but always fascinating; conflicted by ambitions and a loathing for what it takes to fulfill them, he’s willing to risk death in order to rouse the working man to stand up for himself, but can’t summon the everyday decency to remain faithful to his own wife. And that’s Carradine singing the songs and playing the guitar, but not one note is impersonation, just pure performance.

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Though nominated for Best Picture, “Bound for Glory” got a little lost when released, probably because it was made about five years too late. This is a 1971 film, not 1976 — the year of “Rocky” — the year before everything would change with “Star Wars.” But thanks to DVD and some love on Turner Classic Movies, “Glory” has enjoyed a bit of revival these past few years, an appreciation I think will continue to grow until the film receives a wider recognition for the timeless classic it is.

Certainly it helps that Wexler’s photography created one of the five most beautiful color films of the last thirty-five years, but having first seen it only last year, I can tell you it’s Carradine’s work that lingers long after the fade. After decades of seeing him as the guy who made an odd television show in the seventies, this one performance changed my perception entirely.

David Carradine was a great actor capable of great art and an integral part of something that will be appreciated and enjoyed long after TMZ and the like have had their fun.