KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979)

We’re back, people! Here to discuss Kramer vs. Kramer, a family drama taking place in a New York City where women take care of the home, the man of the house can provide a middle class lifestyle on 32K, and people of color only appear in background shots. 

Arriving home from work- late of course- advertising man Ted Kramer is told by his wife Joanna that she is walking out on their marriage. This leaves him to struggle to find a new normal as a single working parent to their young son, Billy. After some time, the equilibrium he arrives at is upended by the return of Joanne, now seeking custody of Billy after a lengthy absence. 

This film is a hard watch, I won’t lie. It is made even harder when you are a couple with a young son, seeing it through the eyes of a child being torn between parents. We see Ted evolve and change through the crisis put before him – in a way, I think we are as an audience set up to ask the question of how all men in a similar spot would rise to the challenge. This film was made in 1979 – a very different time for gender relations and co-parenting. I wonder how audiences back then responded to the notion of a man raising his son alone. 

Ted grows to be a likeable – even loveable – character, transforming from the man in the beginning who doesn’t even seem to be clear on his son’s age to a parent who adores him and cares for him in every way. One of the saddest parts of the film, in my opinion, is that had the couple met later in life, post-evolution, perhaps they would have survived. Meryl Streep is brilliant as ever in the film, playing Joanne. I did wish we’d seen a little more of who she was pre-marriage fleshed out, maybe in flashbacks, so that we could see how shattering the reality of her marriage had become to her in terms of her identity. I felt that would have been more humanizing.