Kramer vs. Kramer is a wonderful film. It’s filled with drama and emotion and superb acting by everyone, including Justin Henry, who was just seven years old when he starred as Billy Kramer and became one of the youngest people ever to be nominated for an Academy Award, which he was for Best Supporting Actor for this film. Dustin Hoffman (Ted Kramer) would win the Oscar for Best Actor and Meryl Streep (Joanna Kramer), starring in her second consecutive Best Picture winner, would win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Rounding out the evening, Writer/Director Robert Benton won Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director.

There are three distinct components to this film that make is so powerful, and thus make it a great film. The first is the character arc of Ted Kramer from a disconnected, self-centered and dismissive man who puts his career ahead of his family to loving, nurturing and caring father who understands that there’s more to caring for your family than bringing home a paycheck. Any screenwriter, professional or aspiring, could learn from the character arc that Benton gave to Ted Kramer in this film. This character arc is perfectly exemplified by two iconic scenes at opposite ends of the film. The first scene takes place the morning after Joanna has left. Ted is trying to simultaneously get ready for work and get Billy ready for school, but Billy also wants French toast for breakfast. Ted kind of knows how to make it, but doesn’t really have the details down. With Billy trying to help him, he makes a mess of the whole situation, all the time telling Billy (and himself) that they’re having fun and that everything is going to be all right. Finally, Billy yells to Ted that the toast is burning in the pan, and Ted grabs it with his bare hand, burning himself and dropping the French toast all over the floor. The second scene happens at the end of the film when it looks like Billy is going to get taken away from Ted. They think that it’s their last morning together, and they make French toast again. This time, they make it in silence as Billy perfectly whips the eggs, Ted expertly douses the bread and hold the pan with a pot holder. They calmly make the breakfast in silence as they work in perfect partnership.

In between those scenes, Ted slowly learns to prioritize Billy’s needs over the needs of his job, and that ultimately causes him to be fired. Simultaneously Ted becomes closer friends with his downstairs neighbor Margaret Phelps (Jane Alexander) and that relationship helps him develop empathy for women that he never had before. Then, just as Ted seems to be getting his feet underneath him, Joanne comes back some eighteen months later and wanting custody of Billy. Now Ted is fighting with everything he has for something that just a few months prior it seemed as though he couldn’t have given a damn about.

That leads me to the second component of this film that makes it so powerful and that is the structure of the story. This is Ted’s story and he has a well-defined Hero’s Journey, which I will break down in a moment, but act structure is something that I’d like to focus on as well. This is a four-act film. There are three plot points in the film and each one sends the film in a completely different direction. We meet Ted in his Ordinary World as he’s hanging out late at the office telling his boss Jim a funny story. He’s in no rush to get home and Jim tells him that a big account in their advertising film is coming his way and if he does it right and totally commits to it, then the sky could be the limit for his career. He arrives home and is at first completely oblivious to the fact that Joanna has packed a suitcase and is trying to tell him that she’s leaving him. This is Ted’s Call to Adventure. Once he finally does come around to understanding what’s going on, all he can do is think about how what Joanna is doing is ruining his day. Ted Refuses the Call by trying to get Joanna to stay, but he lacks the tact and the compassion to understand why she’s leaving in the first place. Ted Meets several Mentors over the course of the film, but Ted’s two main mentors are Margaret and Jim, and they provide advice from the opposite side of the parenting issue. In fact, a lot of the drama in this story comes from the competing advice that Ted gets from Margaret (do what you need to do to take care of your son) and Jim (do what you need to do to take care of your job). Both of them are right in their own way, and it’s up to Ted to find the balance. Ted Crosses the First Threshold into the Special World of being a parent after he and Billy have a wicked fight over dinner, and Ted realizes that he’s all Billy has, and he has to do better. We are moving from the first act where Ted is trying to figure out his new reality and into the second act where Ted is now comfortable. There are still challenges, but Ted is now a father first and everything else is prioritized after that.

The Second Act starts with Tests, Allies and Enemies, and Ted starts to navigate the waters of his new reality. Jim becomes an archetypal shape shifter as he turns from a mentor and an ally into an enemy in this act. Margaret also moves from mentor to ally, and she becomes Ted’s confidant and friend. The nice thing about that relationship as well is that it’s 100% platonic. There is never any sexual tension or innuendo in their relationship, nor is there ever any hint of romance. They are simply good friends who happen to be of the opposite sex, and I can’t think of another film that had the confidence to build that type of platonic relationship between a man and a woman with zero expectation of romance. The test in Tests, Allies and Enemies happens for Ted when Billy falls off the jungle gym at the playground and Ted is afraid that Billy will lose his eye. The doctor assures him that his eye is safe, but he has to give Billy 10 stitches which will cause a small scar, and the scene in which Billy received the stitches is an emotionally gut wrenching one. The Approach happens when Michael hears from Joanna that she’s back in town and she wants to see him. The Ordeal is the scene in which they meet and Joanna tells Ted that she’s spent a lot of time in therapy and she’s found herself and she misses her son. She tells him that she wants custody, and Ted refuses, storming out of the restaurant after throwing his glass of wine against the wall. We are now moving from the second act where Ted started to find his comfort zone into the third act where Ted has to fight in order to maintain what he has.

It doesn’t start out well for Ted, and he’s fired by Jim because it looks like they’re going to lose the account Ted has been working because he hasn’t been able to give it the 110% that Jim is demanding. The Reward section of the film is the trial for custody of Billy. This is where we as the audience learn that Ted now has the compassion that he lacked at the beginning of the story. He now has the emotional maturity and to be the type of father to which men should aspire. We see that he and Billy have become a family unit that can’t be broken, except by court of law. That’s when we come to the Road Back section of the story when we see that the judge has stripped custody of Billy from Ted and given it to Joanna, leaving Ted with one night per week, two weekends per month and half of the holidays. We now move from act 3 where Michael has fought to maintain everything and into act 4 where we see the ramifications of the fact that he lost everything that he fought to keep.

The Resurrection shows Ted now as a sensitive man who explains to Billy without patronizing him what his life is now going to be like, and he does his best to convince Billy that it’s all for the best. The selfish Ted at the beginning of the film couldn’t help but spew his negative feelings even when it was important to listen to Joanna. That Ted is dead and has been resurrected as the compassionate Ted who will tell his son that this new reality is for the best in order to comfort him, even as he knows that nothing could be further from the truth. The Return with the Elixir happens after they’ve successfully made breakfast and Joanna arrives and they think that she’s there to pick up Billy to take him home with her. Instead, she tells Michael that she’s had an epiphany of sorts and she realizes that he already is home. She goes upstairs to tell him that he’ll be staying with his father, and as she tries to put herself together, Ted tells her that she looks great. There it is. Kramer vs. Kramer is told in four acts and each act takes the story in a new and different direction.

Finally the third component that makes this such a powerful film is the acting. Dustin Hoffman was already one of the brightest stars in Hollywood, but this performance would garner him his first Oscar. It is one of the great performances of his career because he’s playing a normal guy. He’s not playing a young man having an affair with the wife of his father’s business partner like in The Graduate or a drug addict like in Midnight Cowboy or a man masquerading as a woman like in Tootsie or an autistic savant like in Rain Man. He’s playing a guy who is just like you and me, and who is going through a situation that any number of men have had to go through. There is nothing extraordinary about Ted Kramer other than the transformation of his personality through his Hero’s Journey and Dustin Hoffman brought such power and gravitas to the role that it would become one of his signature performances. It’s funny, because I don’t know if people think about Ted Kramer as one of Hoffman’s best characters. I haven’t done the research, so I can only say that anecdotally when I hear about Hoffman, I hear about The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Tootsie, and Rain Man. Of course he’s been in dozens of other great films, but to me there is something subtle about his performance in Kramer vs. Kramer that puts this performance even a notch above those other great performances precisely because he’s playing a character without extraordinary characteristics. He’s every man, and he couldn’t have been more believable.

If there is one negative thing to say about this film it is that I’m not a huge fan of the ending. It ends somewhat abruptly and it ends with Ted being passive and good things happening to him from out of the blue. Yes, he showed Joanna over the course of the second half of the film that his home was the right place for Billy, but it just feels a little too convenient that Joanna just has this epiphany. I would have preferred it if Ted had done something specific to make her have that epiphany, or for Joanna to simply leave with Billy, leaving Ted behind to know that he’s a better person despite losing his son. The ending of Kramer vs. Kramer to me feels a little out of place.

Did the Academy get it right?

Yes they did, although it was not a slam dunk. There were four other excellent films nominated against Kramer vs. Kramer in 1979. The film that probably deserved the Oscar the most other than Kramer vs. Kramer was Apocalypse Now. This raging Vietnam epic is truly one of the great films of all time, coming in at number 28 on the original AFI Top 100 Movies list. Kramer vs. Kramer is not on the list, but this is another one of those times when AFI and I part company. I like Apocalypse Now a lot, but it meanders endlessly at times, and is a fairly episodic film. Even though it takes place primarily on a river, it has a lot of the same components as a road movie, and I’m not a huge fan of road movies. Also, with The Deer Hunter and its heavy Vietnam themes winning the previous year, it’s possible that the Academy couldn’t stomach giving its highest honor to a Vietnam picture for the second year in a row. The other films nominated, All That Jazz, Breaking Away and Norma Rae are all great films in their own right, and I wouldn’t blame anyone for voting for any of them. However, in my humble opinion, Kramer vs. Kramer was the most emotional, most dramatic, and most complete film of the year, and it deserved the Oscar for Best Picture.