PG | 1h 45min | Drama | 1979
Films frequently celebrate separation and single parenthood as freeing, and traditional marriage and parenthood as enslaving. This movie, based on Avery Corman’s novel “Kramer Versus Kramer,” busts that myth.
Hotshot executive Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) is in love with himself and his job. He’s won a coveted client account and a promotion. He shares the news with his wife, Joanna (Meryl Streep). She, a disillusioned stay-at-home wife, has news, too. Feeling inadequate as mother to 7-year-old son, Billy (Justin Henry), and out of love with workaholic Ted, she tells him she’s leaving. And does.
Immediately, Ted falters as a father, then fails as a professional. For Billy’s sake, he tries to be a mother, too. That costs. Ted’s thoughts are more with Billy than with his boss, more in the kitchen, dining room, school, and playground than in the office. But it’s also rewarding. Ted’s no longer in love with himself or his job. Billy blooms. Ted cherishes timely support from his and Joanna’s common friend, Margaret Phelps (Jane Alexander).
A year and a half later, Joanna returns with more news. After time by herself, landing a job, and therapy sessions, she’s feeling motherly again. She files for custody of Billy. Before the trial, Ted is fired from his job. His attorney warns that courts typically award custody of pre-teens to mothers; jobless, Ted is enabling the court to do that with Billy. His marriage destroyed by selfishness, Ted now risks losing Billy.
Director Robert Benton asks squabbling spouses to introspect. Could they consider an amicable separation? There’s no such thing. It’s never amicable.
Responsibilities Above Rights
Benton demolishes the commercialization and commoditization of family, and elevates marriage and parenthood to the level of the sacred.Billy complains to Ted, running late from office to school, that “other mothers” had already arrived. Ted’s tough love refuses Billy’s plea for an extra hour of TV. Never mind what “other mothers” do, they had a deal: one hour a day. By implying that Ted’s a mother too, father and son are admitting how crucial mothers are.
Ted proves, parenting isn’t just doing, it’s also being there. It can’t be about who’s better at childcare or household work, or transactional, the way one takes or quits a job. It’s not labor in a marketplace that awards pay rises to better parents, pay cuts to bad ones, and promotions to the best.
Hauntingly, Hoffman, Henry, and Streep depict how children and spouses are not clients to be served. Family is a giving, not of what one has, but of what one is. It isn’t a supply of qualifications, skills, or stamina to meet demand. It’s a surrendering to loving togetherness. No, fathers aren’t better than mothers. Love makes husbands better fathers and makes wives better mothers. Neither is superior. Husbands and wives are complementary.
When Joanna tells a sleepy Billy that she loves him, the word “love” appears three times: Her assurance, Billy’s sleepy response (he loves her too), and her reassurance; she repeats herself.
Benton’s saying that family isn’t about cashing in, ever. When Ted’s world falls apart, he snaps out of it. His world shouldn’t have been at work, but at home. He should work to live (and love), not the other way around. The point of a work-life balance is loving life, not work.
Benton upholds traditional families as the ideal. Self-absorbed adults won’t stay married if they can’t see beyond themselves. Some spouses master this art, even childless. For others, parenting teaches this art, however imperfectly. He isn’t trashing single parenthood. He’s pointing to its result, and adding, it needn’t be this way. Many separated spouses live half-lives, pretending to give children full lives. But bragging about independence can’t mask the interdependence woven into the idea of family.
There’s a reason why children are born dependent on parents, and husbands and wives, dependent on each other. How tragic that some mistake strength for weakness.
