Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
Decided to start watching all of the Oscar best picture winners, in order. I hadn’t heard of some of these movies, some I love and have seen multiple times already and I actively hate others, planning to never watch them again. Fair warning, there will be spoilers in these and other reviews to help explain my point of view.
Based on the novel of the same name, Kramer vs. Kramer is meant to tell the story of the divorce of the Kramers. In the first few minutes of the movie we see Meryl Streep’s Joanna nervously waiting for Dustin Hoffman’s Ted to come home from his high-powered ad agency job. As soon as Ted walks through the door, Joanna delivers her very well-rehearsed speech. She gives him her credit cards and the slips for the dry cleaning, so he can carry on with business as usual because she is leaving him. We don’t really know why she has decided to go, but it is clear that there is nothing that will stop her, not even the pull of their young son Billy, who Joanna wordlessly said goodbye to at the movie’s start. Even when Ted literally steps in front of her and grabs her suitcase to get her to stay put so they can talk, she simply lets go of it, gets into the elevator with nothing more than her coat and leaves. Never has a movie so completely set up the viewer as this one, with just a few well-written scenes. Even though their break-up is the film’s thrust, the movie is actually about the relationship that develops between Ted and Billy and what should happen to that relationship once Joanna returns over one year later.
In between, Ted struggles to balance being a single parent with having a demanding career, which is something I myself had to do, so I understand how difficult it can be, but what I found so interesting and frankly shameful, is how Ted was made to feel as if he was less of a man and less desirable as an employee simply because he had a young son at home for whom he was the primary caretaker. He actually got fired from his job because he had to prioritize parenting. He is in advertising; it wasn’t as if anyone died because a couple of meetings had to be rescheduled.
I can’t recall how many times I’ve seen this movie; I remember seeing it when I was really young and many times afterwards over the course of my life. As I’ve gotten older, and particularly after I became a mother, this movie began to mean different things to me. On this viewing in particular, I struggled to decide who was on the right side of things. My heart kept telling me that Joanna wasn’t the villain just because she had left; in my flawed memory, I had forgotten that she had stayed in touch with Billy. She wrote him letters and sent him presents, so she didn’t abandon him, but of course her sudden absence hurt and confused him. On the other hand, Ted didn’t deserve to have Billy just because he had done what he basically had no other choice in doing; taking full responsibility for the care and feeding of his child. I kept wondering why they couldn’t share custody; Joanna was back in New York, so it wouldn’t have been that difficult for Billy to split his time as evenly as possible with both parents. I don’t know how custody worked in the 1970s, except that kids usually ended up with their mother unless she was an absolute menace, but perhaps shared custody wasn’t much of a thing then. Perhaps that was just the dramatic choice of the writer, to have it be basically all or nothing, with limited visitation for the “losing” parent. It was absolutely presented that way in the movie; one Kramer was going to lose and one was going to win. There was no discussion of the court working with them to come up with the best solution together.
Kramer vs. Kramer won five of the nine Oscars for which it was nominated, including awards for Streep, Hoffman, writing and directing. Each award was deserved, except perhaps for Streep’s. She is of course a legend, but her role was much too small, in my opinion. It was a study in great acting, but I don’t know if that alone made it award-worthy. She was up against her co-star, Jane Alexander, who also did a lot with a relatively small role. I wish Justin Henry had managed to win for his beautiful turn as Billy; his is truly one of the all-time best child performances. He came across a a real child, not an actor, and he had great chemistry with Hoffman. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when Ted and Billy wordlessly go about their morning routine, showing us just how far they have come and how much they have bonded. Silent acting like this is one of my favorite things to see. I also love the scene when Billy and Joanna are reunited in the park; the sheer joy on his face and in the way he runs towards her and leaps into her arms is a thing of beauty. Again, not a single word was said, but you know exactly how overjoyed each of them is to see each other.
It is a shame that we don’t see movies like this anymore, except for perhaps on streaming services. Character-driven stories with a handful of actors and sets that essentially provide a window into a specific period of time in the character’s lives are great and should continue to be made. The next movie on the Best Picture list, Ordinary People, is similar in this way. Neither of these movies would stand a chance of even being nominated for Oscars in this day and age, let alone winning anything, so watching them is actually a joy, even thought he subject matter is a bit heavy. Did this deserve the win? I think so, but I am shocked that it won considering it was up against Apocalypse Now, which many believe is one the best movies ever made. I am not in that camp; it doesn’t do it for me as a piece of film, but considering how many war movies have won the top Oscar, I am surprised it didn’t. Perhaps the voting members were burned out on the Vietnam War, considering the country was still feeling the fallout from it and many were angry about it, in addition to The Deer Hunter having just won the previous year. Norma Rae was also a great movie that perhaps would have won in a different year. I haven’t re-watched that in a while, need to do something about that soon.
Kramer vs. Kramer is one of my favorites, it is a drama that is absolutely worth your time. The acting and writing feel like real life, even though we’re not in the 70s anymore, it still resonates. 4 out of 5 stars.
