005. Kramer vs. Kramer

Please watch the trailer here.

When I decided to add this movie to the master list I did it for 2 main reasons. The first one was that my infinite amount of anal retentive rules for this project obligated me to watch a certain amount of academy award winning movies--easy enough had I already not made myself watch most of the recent ones. I had to go all the way back to 1979 for this one. The other reason is that I like Meryl Streep as an actor. She's amazing. She takes over whatever scene she's in and everytime she's on screen she makes me wonder what's going to happen to movies once her generation of actresses die out. Will we be left with Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan? Or will the Dakota Fannings and Jacob from Twilight prevail (I'm kidding about the Jacob part. Team Edward.)

   Anyway back to my original point, Meryl Streep is amazing. Surprisingly enough, she's not even the best actor in this movie. Dustin Hoffman plays Ted Kramer, abandoned husband, impressive father, survivor. It's really the best acting I've ever seen him in--the only other role my mind seems to remember at the moment is Bernie Focker from those awful Ben Stiller movies. Hoffman did an excellent job of showcasing his anger at his wife leaving, his patience (or sometimes lack thereof) for his child and his desire to do what he thought was best for his son--namely full custody. It's really disappointing he decides to link himself to Ben Stiller every now and then because he's a really good actor.

 The kid himself was really good, too and according to wikipedia is the youngest person to ever be nominated to an Oscar. So yeah. Go, kid! He doesn't seem to have a very active imdb so maybe this was a fluke for him.

 A cool aspect of Kramer vs Kramer was the weird contradiction (purposefully mentioned in the film) of the wife sort of embracing that wave of feminism from the 70s and finding her own purpose beyond being a mother/wife while at the same time the father that embraces his importance in child rearing doesn't get the same sort of respect even though in a perfect world he should. I hope nowadays the courts are much more fair independent of gender because I know from personal experience that fathers can singlehandedly do a great job at raising children.

Also for those who have been living under a rock or don't understand the title, this movie is about a custody battle. I'm not entirely sure how accurate this is legally-- Law and Order taught me that appeals don't usually involve new evidence and that seems to be somewhat important towards the end. I don't really care though. My parents divorced pretty early on and while I imagine they were more like the Roses than the Kramers, I know both my parents did what they had to do with our best interest in mind. The emotions portrayed by the Kramers during this movie are among the most real and relatable I have ever seen during a movie.

Recommended. If you will only watch one movie I recommended from this list, so far this is it.