#12 - Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

I'll try not to go over this again, but the reason why this movie appealed so much to me is because my parents got divorced a month ago and it's been a pretty shitty situation. It's a nice movie to watch if your family is going through that: it offers a pretty optimistic outlook while not being a corny, melodramatic, unrealistic Disney fantasy piece of crap. But enough of that, here's my views on this flick.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, divorce is the central conflict here. Joanna Kramer (Meryl Streep) is divorcing her husband Ted (Dustin Hoffman) and leaving him with their child, mostly because he's a workaholic neglecting jerk that "sucked all the life out of her" and shit, so he has to deal with a kid he has barely spent any time with during most of his parenthood. And, you guessed it, right after they start to get along the mother comes back and the fight for the kid's custody begins.

While I'm sure I've seen this formula plenty of times before, this is one of the first movies to adress the issue if I'm not mistaken. You know, with the concept of family starting to change back in the late 70's and stuff. So I'll give the movie credit for that.

The characters are really easy to connect: both have their flaws and strengths when it comes to their personality and their position in the marriage: sure, Joanna is the one that leaves, but to her credit she is the one that was trying to keep the marriage going while Ted was busy playing Minesweeper at his office or something. And while Ted used to not give a damn about his family he ends up really caring about the kid, to the point of... ok, I won't spoil it, but he's commited. There's a bunch of nice supporting characters here and there that add to the film. Except the kid. Why do they go through all that trouble to keep that annoying brat from the each other, I can't really tell.

This is nice, but I wouldn't mind some child abuse here and there. Kidding.

I feel the movie tries to support both points of view, but it's hard to want the kid to go with his mother when she's absent for most of the movie. We only see the "Kramer vs. Kramer" part in the last half an hour or something. The entire movie is seen from the point of view of Hoffman's character and that really doesn't help us sympathise with both equally. Maybe it's just because I'm a dude, but hey, I felt more supportive of his endeavor because we spend more time with him and his conflict.

I'm sorry, it's hard to feel sorry for the woman that played this. Wait, this was decades before that...

So yeah, in the end, it was an enjoyable movie. It's a lot more personal if you are familiar with divorces or just an unsatisfactory marriage (90% of marriages are estimated to fail... so probably, yes). The outcome, as I said, is pretty optimistic. And even if you can't relate to the situation, it's a good movie to watch.