HYBRID IN-PERSON AND ONLINE PROGRAM

Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978, 127min.) 

Linda DeLibero, senior lecturer and special advocate for alumni and outreach, and former director of the JHU film and media studies program

Coming Home was Jane Fonda's passion project, a story she struggled to bring to the screen for nearly a decade. As a relentless champion of Vietnam veterans' rights (even as many of them regarded her as the traitorous "Hanoi Jane"), Fonda was adamant that a film focused on the personal travails of a paraplegic vet returning to "normal" life was vital to changing the course of the war. Her hero, Luke Martin, was partly based on Ron Kovic, whom she befriended long before Oliver Stone directed Kovic's autobiography, Born on the Fourth of July, in 1989. Indeed, convincing studio heads to finance an antiwar movie in the early '70s proved impossible. Still, Fonda persisted. When director Hal Ashby—in the middle of his phenomenal streak of award-winning movies—finally agreed to take on the film, the war was over, but the final product still stands as one of the great Vietnam War movies and a great anti-war film for all time. In addition to Jon Voigt's sensitive performance as Luke—amidst a rich in veterans—Jane Fonda's Sally Hyde, as the wife of Bruce Dern's disillusioned Marine captain, convincingly portrays a journey traveled by many women in the 1960s: from meekly subservient housewife to fully realized woman, aware of all the life-altering changes around her. For this, she won both her second Best Actress Oscar and lasting respect for bringing this very personal war story to the screen. 

The summer film series is created in partnership with The Renaissance Institute.

$10 fee for guests or $40 for six films (No fee for ASG/RI members, or ASG subscribers)