I just posted my complaint that the movies are getting weirder and less enjoyable now that we've reached the last quarter of the 20th century in our Academy Award Best Picture survey, but the very next year (1979) gave me hope. Kramer vs. Kramer is a great film, and not just because it followed on the heels of the horrible Deer Hunter. Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep deserved the acting Oscars they won, and I strongly suspect the only reason Justin Henry did not win Best Supporting Actor was reluctance on the part of some to give an Oscar to an eight-year-old child. But he was awesome.
Kramer vs. Kramer works so well, I believe, because of the dedication on the part of director and the cast to making a true story. In The Deer Hunter, truth was sacrificed for the sake of the story; here the director, someone else whose role I forget, and Dustin Hoffman spent months setting the foundation for the movie, in order to tell the truth about divorce.They succeed magnificently. It's all there: the dismal heritage of the self-centered 60s, which demeaned motherhood and encouraged people to "find themselves" at any cost; employers who demanded the sacrifice of family on corporate altars and the workaholics who willingly paid that price; and above all the tragic struggles of the children to survive their personal 9/11. Yet the story is told with such realism and sympathy and understanding that the truth is a surgeon's scalpel, not a bludgeon, and thus far more effective.
Parental warning: In most cases I detest the phrase "for mature audience" on the grounds that anything bad for kids is probably bad for adults as well. However, there are a few movies that I think worthwhile but definitely inappropriate for younger folks, and this is one. Don't be fooled by its PG rating. There's nudity, a sex scene, and objectionable language. It's all brief, appropriate, and in one case even funny. Most of my readers know it doesn't take much of the above to ruin a movie for me, but that was not the case with Kramer vs. Kramer. Still, PG is too low a rating in my opinion, especially since the effect of the nudity, sex, and language on a child would pale to utter insignificance compared with the devastation of the story line itself.
That aside, Kramer vs. Kramer is a powerful movie, incredibly well designed and acted. Even more so when you realize that many of the best scenes were actually improvised. That's not lack of planning—that's the result of thorough preparation and a team working together magnificently.
