by Chris Marshall:
I mentioned in yesterday’s post that Kramer vs. Kramer far exceeded my expectations, but I’m afraid that’s
understating it a bit, as I had very low expectations. Perhaps a more glowing
endorsement would be to say that it is a very good film by any measure.
I should have known that a collaboration between Dustin
Hoffman and Meryl Streep in their primes would be decent at worst, but
sometimes I forget that the plot of a movie isn’t its defining element. I
expected to be bored, and that wasn’t the case at all. Part of the problem was
that it simply didn’t have the same reputation as the other winners in the
1970s, so I judged it unfairly based on the level of competition. Whatever
excuse I could use, I was wrong.
This isn’t a movie about plot. It’s about characters. You
could almost view Kramer vs. Kramer as
the dramatic/tragic counterpart to Annie Hall, as they are both about the deterioration of a relationship. The
difference is that in the former, a child is involved, which adds an extra
level of complication to the whole deal.
There is not an overt villain in this film, but I think you’d
be hard-pressed to argue that Meryl Streep is presented in a highly positive
light, merely for the fact that she walked out on her son. We spend the first
half of the movie, if not a little more, with Dustin Hoffman, and because of
this, we develop an attachment with him. Roger Ebert claims that the movie
doesn’t take sides, but on this count, I don’t think he’s correct. I believe we
are supposed to sympathize with Hoffman. Of course, maybe that’s just me.
I know I shouldn’t speak this way about children, but Justin
Henry, the kid who played Hoffman and Streep’s son, has one of the most
supremely punchable faces in the history of cinema. He really didn’t do that
bad of a job overall. He just, you know, had one of those faces. There were
times when I could kind of understand why Streep bolted.
 |
| So punchable. |
I want to close out this post by discussing a bad tendency
that I’m just as guilty of as anybody else, if not more so. It is commonly
acknowledged that, in retrospect, the Academy often makes the wrong decision
with their Best Picture winners. Unfortunately, the “wrong” winner sometimes
becomes vilified because of it. For example, it is probably true that Apocalypse Now was a better/greater/more
important movie than Kramer vs. Kramer,
or that Raging Bull was better than Ordinary People, or whatever.
But it is completely unfair to criticize the winning film
based on this. Outside of being nominated for the same award by people not
connected to either film, there is no connection between Kramer vs. Kramer and Apocalypse
Now at all. If the result had been different, it would have zero effect on
the quality of either movie. In fact, the only real change would be that Kramer vs. Kramer would likely fall into
obscurity. You don’t hear many people talking about Breaking Away or Norma Rae
these days, yet both were also nominated in 1979.
So in some respects, maybe it was for the best that Kramer vs. Kramer won, because it’s a
film that deserves to be seen. I don’t think it achieved the same kind of
greatness that many of the other winners from the 1970s achieved, but so what?
It’s a fine movie with fine performances by fine actors.
I bring up the point now because it’s more relevant to this
time period in Oscar history than perhaps any other. There are several years in
the 1980s where I think the “wrong” movie won, but after watching this and Ordinary People, I’ve realized that even
if they weren’t the best movies of their year, they could still be really good[1].
I need to have a less negative mindset going into them.
No comments:
Post a Comment