Kramer vs. Kramer

Robert Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer is a moving, persuasive family drama, though its sympathy for the father sometimes gets ahead of its understanding of the mother. We recommend it with that imbalance in mind. Adapted by Robert Benton from Avery Corman’s novel, it follows the break-up of Ted and Joanna’s marriage and the growing closeness of Ted and their son, Billy. Its strength is the attention paid to care as something an adult has to learn.

Dustin Hoffman makes Ted’s education convincing because he does not erase the man’s self-absorption as soon as sympathy becomes available. The father-son scenes depend on the uncomfortable business of an adult discovering that a child cannot be managed to suit him. Justin Henry gives Billy a child’s changing wants without the fixed sweetness that makes so many screen children difficult to believe. We were moved by their growing closeness, because Dustin Hoffman makes paying proper attention to Billy seem difficult before it begins to seem natural.

Meryl Streep gives Joanna an unhappiness that cannot simply be dismissed as selfishness. Her performance makes us consider what it costs to remain inside a family when the arrangement has stopped being bearable. She does not make every feeling agreeable, and the film is better whenever it allows her that difficulty. Alongside Dustin Hoffman’s more immediately inviting work, she keeps the marriage from becoming a straightforward account of a man discovering he was rather good all along.

Néstor Almendros’s cinematography makes the domestic scenes welcoming enough that we understand what is being lost. The warmth helps the father-son passages, though it also softens some of the ugliness of separation. Paul Sylbert’s production design gives the family a credible home, and its polish belongs to the same accessible approach. We can believe in these people’s shared life, even when the film makes their troubles look a little too well arranged.

Gerald B. Greenberg’s editing keeps the film moving without making Ted and Billy’s relationship feel hurried. At 105 minutes, it has room for changes of behaviour without treating every one as a major revelation. The music credited to John Kander and Herb Harris is restrained enough to leave the actors in charge. That restraint works: the changing way Ted and Billy respond to each other supplies the feeling without much help.

Robert Benton’s writing is less sure when it presses us to judge the parents. The film understands the practical education of a father in persuasive detail, but it can make a mother’s dissatisfaction seem like a problem that needs answering before sympathy can be granted. Meryl Streep does much to correct that imbalance without quite removing it. For a divorce drama so good at showing people struggling to manage ordinary responsibilities, it can be frustratingly eager to make their relative merits easy to assess.

We would leave time for a conversation afterwards. Anyone looking for an even-handed account of separation should be prepared to question the screenplay as well as the parents. Watch it with someone willing to argue Joanna’s side.