Movie Review: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) (English Film - Hollywood)

I thought it was time I started blogging-on non-Hindi films too. Kramer vs. Kramer was a much acclaimed movie that I’ve wanted to see for a long time. It stars 2 Hollywood greats: Dustin Hoffman as Ted Kramer and Meryl Streep as Joanna Kramer

The Kramer couple separates in the first 15 minutes of the movie (they do it fast in Hollywood). Joanna has long felt stifled in her marriage with Ted, a corporate go-getter and decides to leave him abruptly (that’s what it seems for Ted at least), on one of the 5 best days of his life. Joanna leaves the son with Ted since she is quite unsure about what she is going to do in life. Ted then has to learn to raise his son by himself and at the end of the next 18 months or so has had quite a decent shot at it. Until…. his ex-wife returns to claim custody of their son. The battle ends in court with a Kramer vs. another Kramer.

The movie won 5 Oscars (DH for Best Actor, MS for Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium). That alone could be reason-enough to watch the movie.

The poignant story in one form or the other is something that I can identify-with, even though I belong to quite a different culture. Although in our culture the wife would probably not leave the husband (at least in the previous generation), the various episodes in their life do touch a raw nerve of memory at one point or the other.

The scene at the beginning symbolizes the break-down of the Kramers’ marriage: The departing wife says to her husband who is on the phone ‘I am leaving you’. And he pauses mid-sentence to reply to her ‘I can't hear’. Too often in any relationship, this active ‘listening’ has drifted away and that’s the start of the end. Joanna Kramer is on the verge of a breakdown facing a total loss of identity as a subservient housewife to Ted. She believes she does the right thing by walking out on her husband even though to Ted, she is deserting the child. That’s the conundrum. Ted (who except for his inattentiveness to his wife, doesn’t depict any characteristics of a ‘bad’ husband) has an ego which is hurt badly and a career which suffers. But he learns to love his son more, as a result.

Having stayed in the US and in Europe I must say the isolation in life there scares the shit out of me. Especially the life faced by the kids of separated parents. Justin Henry as Billy Kramer brings the right amount of sensitivity and poignancy to his character. As a 7-8 year old kid in the movie, you feel like reaching out to him. The progression of the relationship of father and son is depicted through various scenes: such as making a meal, at the school’s Halloween Day, learning to live and adjust with each other and the vacuum in their lives. I think this is the weak link of the movie. This evolution of their relationship doesn’t seem very convincing. The angst of caring for his kid all by himself doesn’t come through very well at all.

You have snippets that would hold true for many other cultures: the kid spilling juice over his fathers business papers and the father sermonizing and sending him on a guilt trip, the father forgetting which grade his son is in, and getting late when picking him up, pushing the kid faster into becoming a more responsible youth before he has lived his life as a child. But there is a hurriedness in these scenes. Inspite of a high pressure job, I wasn’t really convinced how DH finds the time to care for his kid, nor was this well-elaborated.

DH as the father is competent but I felt that MS far outshone him in the movie. And that brings us to the strength of the movie. MS as the guilt-wracked woman leaving her husband, the mother in the court desperate to have her child back, and the understanding woman right in the final scene of the movie. MS swallows DH in those scenes. While DH seems competent, MS is brilliant. Maybe it’s only due to the lesser screen-time available to her, that she got the Best supporting actress award while DH walked-off with the Best Actor award.

And as for the end-play in the movie, it seemed more Bollywood than Hollwood. I wont reveal more at this point. But I must say neither was it unsatisfying.

And as for bloopers, there is particular scene where MS calls DH to a restaurant and reveals her intention of taking custody of their son. And DH has to fling a glass against the wall while departing. Just before he does that, he places the glass in an inconvenient position, realizes that and re-places the glass in the correct position before flinging it against the wall. Tacky direction and editing, that.

And I do have a crib about one shot in the film: This is where DH has just slept with his business colleague at home and the nude woman finds her way to the bathroom at night encountering the Kramer kid in the passage-way. I am quite uncomfortable about the ethics involved in this. Don’t they have any laws in the US to prevent such shots of children encountering nudity? Need to check-out what the laws in other countries have to say on this.

Credits

Editor: Jerry Greenberg

DoP: Nestor Almendros

From the novel by Avery Corman

Produced by Stanley Jaffe

Written for the screen and directed by: Robert Benton