Ted (Dustin Hoffman) and Joanna Kramer (Meryl Streep) have been married for 8 years and have a 5-year-old Billy (Justin Henry). But one day, Joanna reveals that motherhood and house-wifeness is not working for her, so she leave career-focused Ted with Billy and disappears to California. Ted is forced to muster up whatever parenting skills he has to be both mother and father to Billy. But 18 months later, Joanna comes back, and she wants custody…
Doug says...
We end the 1970s, and on my part it’s with a real sense of thankfulness. I’ve not enjoyed many of the films this decade, finding them lacking in humour, kindness or genuine, down-to-earth affection. So it’s with pleasure and not a little surprise that I found Kramer vs Kramer to be a deeply moving and tender portrait of a father’s struggle to keep his son.
It’s the first time we’ve seen Dustin Hoffman since Midnight Cowboy, and I’m beginning to consider him one of my favourite actors. In this he plays Ted Kramer, a work-obsessed art designer who is instantly unlikeable as he brushes off wife Joanna (Meryl Streep)’s protestations that she’s leaving him as silly nonsense.
It’s credit to Hoffman that Ted’s slow transformation from utter dickhead to caring father seems genuine and understandable. The film starts off with a slow telling of how Ted goes from not being able to make eggy bread to a gorgeous scene where he sets son Billy off on his first bike. As Billy cycles off, Ted cheers him on and then, a short pause later, yells ‘don’t go too far’. It’s very real and such a refreshing difference to the toxic ‘hard man’ masculinity that has pervaded much of the ‘70s films. (Although Hoffman remains problematic, as he often didn’t warn Streep of acting choices he’d made, such as throwing a wine glass above her head in a scene and slapping her for real. Method acting is often used as an excuse for being a dick).
Meryl Streep makes her second appearance in as many years. Much like last week’s The Deer Hunter, she still feels like she’s cooking. It’s not the extraordinary talent that gets nominated at the Oscars every year these days - and I actually quite like that. This is Streep practicing and honing her craft, and while it means she’s not as magnetic here, it makes me value her work in modern films like The Hours and The Devil Wears Prada far more - it’s almost as if she had to grow older in order to truly become transformational.
The film truly soars though once Joanna (having fled the house leaving Ted to raise Billy) returns a year and a half later to claim her son back. Ted, now having entirely reshuffled his life to make Billy his priority is angry. And the ensuing court scenes are electrifying in the way that they highlight how utterly unfair the courts can be in the case of custody hearings. We know that Ted is a wonderful father, but the courts use evidence from before to blacken his character, moments that even Joanna looks ashamed of in the court.
It’s a film of quiet subtlety, and no more so than the scene where Ted tells Billy that Joanna is going to take care of him. It’s a gorgeous performance from Hoffman as he works to make sure Billy understands what’s happening without getting upset, and Justin Henry as Billy acts well beyond his years to match Hoffman.
In the end, you’re left with a thoughtful, touching film that gives equal weight to both the mother and father roles in a child’s life. The divorce itself doesn’t even get shown - it’s all about the kid, and that’s refreshing in an era dominated by ‘hard’ uncaring characters.
Highlight
The court cases are tense and full of emotion as the lawyers twist truth to their own ends
Lowlight
The ending was a little convenient, even if it was the ending we wanted. Perhaps more of a compromise regarding Billy’s custody would have been more real.
Mark
8/10
Paul says...
Kramer Vs Kramer won big at the 1979 Oscars. As well as beating All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now and Norma Rae to the Best Picture trophy, it garnered Best Director, Best Actor for Hoffman and Best Supporting Actress for Streep (this was her second of 21 Oscar nominations, a phenomenal record-breaker, and first of three wins), along with acting nominations for Jane Alexander and Justin Henry, who is the youngest nominee ever at just 8 years old. And it’s easy to see why - this is an extremely touching, layered and engaging film about divorce, parenthood and the gender roles entwined in both of these themes.
Surprisingly and refreshingly, the divorce is entirely centric around the husband. Ted starts off as a quasi-misogynistic, career-obsessed bread winner who doesn’t even know what grade his child is in at school. Joanna’s exit in the opening scene at first seems random but the audience, and Ted, gradually discover that she once had a career herself and now feels suffocated in a post-Female Eunuch world where more and more women are choosing to follow their own ambitions rather than what a patriarchal society expects of them. Through Dustin Hoffman’s incredibly real performance, we side with Ted, and support him in his realisation that he has mistreated Joanna and his atonement by being a great father to his oddly articulate son. It’s very sweet and I found myself heartbroken when his boss proves to be so bored and unsympathetic towards Ted’s new-found love of fatherhood, and I felt Ted’s desperation when he is fired and is scrabbling for a new job to pay lawyer’s fees.
Now here’s the most interesting bit. The film not only places the mother’s point of view as less important plot-wise, but as morally questionable. As I mentioned before, Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch was heavily in the public consciousness by 1979, and the '60s and '70s waves of feminism had given women a newfound power to create their own paths (and justly so). Joanna is evidently a product of this, but while she wants her career back, she also wants 18 months off from motherhood to “find herself” and then come back and gain majority custody rights. The second half of the film is dominated by the injustice that, although she abandoned her child and Ted has stepped up to the mark, the courts will likely rule in her favour because she is a mother. The film may be liberal in its assertion that fathers can, and should, take on the conventionally maternal role, but it is also conservative in its suggestion that Joanna wrongfully feels she has a right to everything. My interpretation is that the film is against women, and perhaps men too, who think they are entitled to a career, a therapeutic break from parenting, and the joys of child-rearing when actually the three are very difficult to mix successfully.
This assertion is uncomfortable to work with but pertinent even today. As an Early Years Teacher, it is still extremely rare for me to work with parents where the father stays at home and the mother works. In cases both professional and personal where divorce or separation has occurred, the children spend a majority of time with the mothers, either through court ruling or through the family’s choice which will inevitably be influenced by what society expects. For a divorced father to have sole custody of their child even now, the mother would have to be deceased, incapable of caring, or voluntarily given that custody, and courts will still favour her above a potentially better father. I may be touching on some very tricky opinions here, so please feel free to contradict me.
Kramer Vs Kramer explores all this without becoming didactic or overly-sentimental and Hoffman steals it. It’s the closest I’ve come to crying since How Green Was My Valley, and it’s a welcome relief from the heavy-going machismo and darkness of the '70s. Most remarkably, it’s a 40-year-old film that remains relevant today, and that’s a great achievement in itself.
Highlight
The scene in which Ted works out why Joanna left him and explains it to Billy. It’s a beautiful monologue and it’s the moment when we begin to love and support Ted.
Lowlight
A few more jokes would have given an extra layer to the film, I suppose. As many a film-maker has proven, if you laugh with your characters, you’ll be all the more devastated when they fall.
Mark
10/10
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