Kramer vs. Kramer 1979

The Film:

This is a film I've seen before, quite some time back. In fact, I think I got the DVD for £2 in the Woolworths closing down sale. I remember liking it - I like Hoffman and Streep (far more than Andy does!) and I'm always happy to watch a family drama, particularly if it's also a legal drama.

I don't remember being blown away by it though, and I'm guessing that it's going to suffer a bit from being slightly on the ordinary side - possibly because there were so many similar films (some with Hoffman or Streep in them) throughout the 80s that may have served to render this one far less special to me than to 1979 US audiences.

It's interesting how each film that won in the last year of a decade somehow seems to fit more with the following decade - Broadway Melody was the sound of things to come, Gone With the Wind was a 40s-style tecnicolor blockbuster, All The Kings Men was a very 50s style social drama, and Midnight Cowboy belonged very much in 70s realism. Everything I remember about Kramer vs Kramer puts it in a very similar bracket to so many 80s films, especially ones directed by the likes of Mike Nichols - things like Heartburn, Regarding Henry etc. It will be interesting to see how it holds up to these films!

The Ceremony:

Very little difference from last year - same place, same month (14th April this time), same host - slightly shorter running time. Here's Carson's opening monologue - with a joke about the length of the ceremony that references the Iranian Hostage Crisis......which we'll be coming back to in about 30 films' time.....

Other Notable Winners That Night:

Oscar liking Sally for the first time!

The Kramers pretty much swept the boards, certainly with the big awards. If it wasn't for Meryl (rightly) winning for a supporting role, then it would have won the Big Five. 

It didn't though, and Best Actress went to Sally Field for Norma Rae, the first of her two wins (and not the one with the infamous acceptance speech - that's still to come!)

79 year old Melvyn Douglas won Supporting Actor, for Being There. He was 70 years older than fellow nominee Justin Henry - the biggest age gap up to that point (and not surpassed until 2013)

Among the other winners there was an award for the Visual Effects in Alien - with one of the team being H R Giger. Their award was presented to them by Harold Russell who was still using very similar prosthetics to those he had in the 1940s. I bet Giger could have designed something fabulous for him!

Best Song:

Sorry Oscar, wrong choice again this year - choosing Jennifer Warnes (singing this song from Norma Rae) over the masterpiece that is Kermit the Frog's signature song, The Rainbow Connection. Thankfully (in this category, at least) the 80s are on their way....

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Sheen Snr in 'Nam (Sheen Jnr is coming up in a few films' time!)

The other nominees were Breaking Away (a "coming-of-age-drama" that I know absolutely nothing about), Norma Rae (see Sally Field above!), All That Jazz (weird but wonderful) and the next big Nam film after last year's two classics, Apocalypse Now.

It probably should have been Apocalypse Now. It's a bit of a marmite film, but put up against Dustin and Justin making eggy bread it's definitely got a lot more going for it. I'm guessing the Academy felt they needed a change after the double-Nam domination at the previous years' awards.

(Of course, it was also the year of Alien - but everyone failed to recognise quite what a classic that would become, and the Visual Effects award was its only win out of two nominations.)

Our Verdict:

Father-Son bonding over eggy bread

I'm actually really glad that KvK didn't get the Big Five. It really doesn't deserve to be put on a list with those films that did. There's nothing really wrong with it - and there's a lot that's right with it - but, watching it in 2018, it's really nothing special. As I said above, I think that's partly the fault of the 80s. It sort of suffers from being the first of it's kind. And, for the record, I'd say it was better than Heartburn but not as good as Regarding Henry (which, technically was a 90s film, but only just!)

Single parent determination

So, to the plot - Ted is a workaholic who is married to Joanna and they have a young son, Billy. One day Joanna announces that she's unhappy in the marriage and leaves. This then leads to the first half of the film showing Ted trying to cope with his job and his new responsibilities as a single father. The job gets lost fairly quickly and he has to battle to get a new one and start again far lower down the career ladder. Meanwhile his relationship with Billy takes some time but becomes gradually stronger. This is where some of the best scenes happen - Justin Henry, playing Billy, is very good indeed and plays really well next to notoriously intense method actor Hoffman. The way their changing relationship is shown through successive mealtime scenes is subtle and effective.

Oscar nominated crying

The second half of the film starts when Joanna returns, more than a year later, and starts a custody battle with Ted. This shift quickly heightens the tension, leading to courtroom scenes where, if you didn't know the outcome, it would be difficult to call it.

There's a fair bit of shouting, rather a lot of crying - but ultimately none of it is unrealistic given the characters and the situations they find themselves in. Meryl Streep apparently pushed for changes to Joanna's character to make her more sympathetic. She lost, but I think she was probably right. I know that we are supposed to be championing the cause of the single father, but I think we end up doing it too much at the expense of sympathy for why Joanna felt she had to leave. This would have been handled very differently even only a couple of years later and would have made for a more even handed story.

Oscar winning crying

As both of us watching have a legal background, we were particularly harsh critics of the court scenes - having to stop and remember that this was the US legal system 40 years ago. Actually, when you look at it in this context, the film was quite radical in showing the changing parenting roles and different family setups. Also, ten years later the UK still enshrined in law the idea that, in a custody battle, a child would be better in the care of their mother unless there are very clear reasons to show otherwise. We know what Ted and Billy have been through, a situation that Joanna deliberately caused when she left the home - but the legal odds are very strongly stacked against Ted.

Overall, the story of the Kramers doesn't do very much for us in 2018. As a film it showcases some very good acting (particularly young Justin Henry) but, whilst the general story is a fairly timeless family drama, the historical social context of it makes it really dated. Something that isn't true of Apocalypse Now or Alien.