“It has to do with constancy:” the feminist underpinnings of Kramer vs. Kramer
Revisiting Kramer vs. Kramer — the Best Picture-winning 1979 domestic drama about a newly-single father, Ted Kramer, who must learn to juggle his career with the needs of his young son, Billy (played by Justin Henry) — is a bit harrowing in the wake of allegations of sexual assault made by several women against the film’s star, Dustin Hoffman.
These claims were made public five years ago, but it had been years even then since I’d seen what may be Hoffman’s greatest film. I’ve been trying to avoid his filmography in general, mostly out of dismay, but also because at a certain point it becomes maddening to watch someone you know is simultaneously committing atrocious acts off-, and sometimes even onscreen.
To consider that this poignant, elegant portrait of an ad schmuck dissolving his shell and becoming an empathetic, responsible human being should have been crafted or dictated so closely by a man who, just a few months after the film’s release, exposed himself to a teenage girl, and who even, during filming, “improvised” attacks or intrusive touches toward his women co-stars, is, to put it simply, crushing.
Indeed, the reason I came back to Kramer vs. Kramer is because of one of those women: Meryl Streep. It occurred to me recently that I’m not sure Ms. Streep, for all her acclaim and adoration, has ever been in a truly great movie. She has made a few excellent pieces of entertainment — Kramer, Adaptation. (which comes closest to being great), The Devil Wears Prada — but that’s it. Never, in my eyes, has America’s most revered actor been part of an all-out masterpiece. So I wanted to remind myself of what Streep can do with material that approaches her degree of talent.
Of course, Streep’s Joanna, the wife who leaves her hubby and “abandons” her son, is not the lead character here. Kramer vs. Kramer is primarily concerned with the experiences of Mr. Kramer — whose journey, it must be said, amounts to a fascinating diagnosis of contemporary gender expectations. Perhaps the starkest dimension of Ted’s work life-home life conflict is the unyielding and hostile demands of his boss, Jim (played by George Coe). Ted receives a promotion just before his wife leaves him, so his subsequent ability to handle the job is compromised by not only his child’s needs, but by his increasing personal devotion to those needs.
Jim’s brutal intolerance for this shift in Ted’s priorities is very revealing of the anti-domestic — and, by extension, anti-feminist — standards of most professional workplaces at the time. By taking on responsibilities typically allotted to women, Ted (and the audience) gets a glimpse of the misogyny that permeates all professional spheres.
This is just one facet of Kramer vs. Kramer’s intentionally revisionist approach to how we view and function within family. When Joanna makes the decision to move out, she does so to reclaim some of her own agency, but it can also be said that her departure has the effect of feminizing, or humanizing her husband. Parenthood radicalizes Ted, so to speak. He becomes a feminist; he becomes a human being.
The fact remains, though, that the film does not belong to Mrs. Kramer. It’s a Herculean task, shouldering taboo while seeking audience identification, and Streep harnesses a compelling softness in Joanna that suggests both meekness and calm intelligence. Yet in the gentle battle that is Kramer vs. Kramer, it’s the Missus who is defeated — not only in the retaining of her son, whom she rather conveniently forfeits to Mister in the last act, but in the ownership of narrative. Much like Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story a few years ago, which cast a similarly sympathetic gaze toward a woman who walks out on her family, the majority of screentime nonetheless belongs to said woman’s slighted male partner. The wife refers to years of emotional neglect that we never witness; we have to taker her word for it, whereas her husband’s pain is in full view.
This is still a boy’s world, and the misbehaving woman is exiled. I think it’s time we see such a story from Joanna’s point of view; the subject matter might still be contentious, but I also trust that there’s an audience today that’d leap at the opportunity to see her perspective put up onscreen. Kramer vs. Kramer is still a beautiful, intelligent work that calls out to be watched again — and maybe it’s calling out because it wants to continue a conversation that it started forty-four years ago.
