Kramer vs. Kramer swept the box office during the 1979 holiday season, earning big bucks and five Academy Awards from seven Oscar nominations. Audiences loved the nuanced story of a divorced couple duking it out for custody of a child, and so did critics like Siskel & Ebert. The duo called it “impressive” and among the best films of the year, a crown that evolved decades later to be heralded among the finest pieces of cinema alongside Citizen Kane and Casablanca.
During his review of the movie, though, Gene Siskel slipped in his revelry for how the film was “sympathetic to men trying to be the principal breadwinner and father at the same time” as opposed to “women’s lib” movies that cast the male gender in a negative light.
Like all landmark legal cases, the verdict on how Joanna was treated in Kramer vs. Kramer remains open to interpretation. While Meryl Streep’s character won the court case, she lost the battle of public opinion. However, 45 years after the film first hit theaters, we can see there was validity to what the fictional mother was seeking, thanks to the vision of one bold actress.
No Such Thing As An Open and Shut Case
Joanna takes the stand in the custody trial to gain custody of her son
Columbia Pictures
Kramer vs. Kramer was a risky film in its day, as movies about divorce weren’t common in 1979. This was the era of the Hollywood Renaissance, a new approach for cinema to delve into unexplored topics within an evolving socio-political landscape. While the real world was changing, so was the one captured through Panavision lenses. However, progress wasn’t always the plot du jour.
By 1979, there was a massive upheaval for women’s rights. Two years prior, sexual harassment was recognized by the judicial system as a legitimate problem, and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act passed in Congress 14 months before the movie was released. Five years earlier, women earned the right to obtain a credit card without a man’s signature. Even with those advances, women were expected to eventually give up their careers to become homemakers and frowned upon if they didn’t.
Films with feminist ideas became more accessible in this era, but many were made by male directors offering their view of who this modern “liberated woman” was. In the case of Kramer vs. Kramer, producers Richard Fischoff and Stanley Jaffe adapted the story from Avery Corman’s book by the same name, one which made Joanna — the character Meryl Streep would later play — more frigid and flightier than her onscreen counterpart.
Corman believed the feminist movement was “too overheated about men” and decided to write a novel about the idealized father to dispel the “toxic rhetoric.” His goal was to “redress a wrong” by battling contemporary gender norms. His body of work included 1991’s Prized Possessions, which looked at date rape on a college campus and ultimately let the rapist off the hook because of his potential social standing later in life. Corman’s intentions may have been altruistic in offering both sides of the story, but his resolutions to deep issues typically favored men.
What’s Kramer vs. Kramer About?
Trailer for Kramer vs. Kramer
Frustrated with the drudgery of her existence, unhappy wife and mother Joanna (Meryl Streep) informs her career-obsessed husband, Ted (Dustin Hoffman), that she’s leaving. Making the announcement more shocking, Joanna won’t be taking the preadolescent son with her. “He’s better off without me,” a tearful Joanna tells Ted as the elevator door effectively closes on their relationship.
In the ensuing months, Ted grapples with maintaining a professional life while singlehandedly fulfilling all the parental roles, including the ones he neglected while Joanna was with him. Over a year later, Ted goes from clueless to competent, discovering what being a parent means while learning how much he loves his kid. But that all comes crashing down when Joanna returns and asks for sole custody.
The ex-partners battle in court, letting the legal system determine the best choice to raise their son. Unfortunately, the trial degrades into a vicious brawl with their lawyers using every dirty trick in the book to prove not who is the most fit parent, but who is the worst human being.
Once the dust settles, the judge rules in favor of Joanna keeping Billy. However, in another shocking turn of events, Joanna relents after learning how much Ted has grown in her absence. She realizes that father and son should stay together, opening the door for a new cordial and platonic relationship with her former husband.
Investigating Joanna Kramer
Meryl Streep as Joanna Kramer, a character more complex than the movie leads you to believe
Columbia Pictures
There are key differences between the film and the novel, and none favor the mother.
As intelligent as she is beautiful (a point Corman thoroughly and frequently details), Joanna is presented as selfish and abrasive. Her discovery that motherhood doesn’t fill her with joy shocks her but festers as each unfulfilling day in her life passes. Perhaps she’s jealous that her son has so much to discover as he develops, while she’s trapped looking after him with no time to know herself. After all, she gave up her career to become a housewife for Ted, who is presented as chaste, devoted, and ever-valiant.
What drove Joanna to walk out on her marriage and son? According to the book, tennis… and, also, the need to find purpose. Throughout the story, she never stopped loving her son but hated how her world was defined solely by parenthood instead of her own accomplishments. But Streep’s portrayal of Joanna makes it evident that there’s even more going on than meets the eye.
Joanna desperately needed help and validation that she never received from her husband, who instead is painted as the victim for simultaneously taking on the burden of homemaker and income maker as a result of his marital negligence. As Joanna explains while on the stand, she didn’t want to abandon her son but felt her husband cut off her options and wasn’t allowing her to be “whole.”
Joanna was a woman battling depression, trapped in a marriage where she never felt seen or heard, struggling to accept that the cliche of “having it all” only meant having what society said she should have. She felt intense scrutiny over seeking out a more dimensional version of herself. In fact, the cross-examination jabs her for having multiple lovers through her life, and for daring to take therapy to better herself — still taboo in the ’70s.
Enter Meryl Streep, fighting tooth and nail to get the role, then fighting harder to reshape it while duking it out behind the scenes with her onscreen husband.
If I Play Rough, They Will Too
The startling wine glass scene was a spur of the moment improv from Hoffman, one of the many ways the actor terrorized Streep and the crew to get the best performance from everyone
Streep wasn’t the first choice to play Joanna, but the 29-year-old wowed the producers and director with her interpretation. The Deer Hunter star read the Corman novel, and told the producers she felt Joanna was “an ogre, a princess, an ass.” Streep wanted to redress a wrong that was unfairly slanted. The character would have been far worse if not for Streep’s warmth and humanity.
Hoffman, who was in the midst of a divorce, knew Streep had recently lost her first husband, John Cazale, due to lung cancer. Hoffman used that grief on set to push Streep to her limits, including verbally abusing her, slapping her (yes, really), shocking her with the infamous wine glass break, and needling her about her recently passed husband to provoke a bigger emotional output. Years later, Streep described it as “overstepping.” Still, she soldiered through the production and gave an undeniably tour de force performance, transforming Joanna from a ghoulish caricature of a selfish woman into something real and nuanced.
Moviegoers came in droves to see this unique film, toppling heavy hitters like Alien, Apocalypse Now, and Rocky II at the box office. However, feminists criticized it for showering a man with praise for stepping up to take care of a child, while it’s taken for granted when a woman does the same. The sexism was apparent, but it was sadly just an accepted sign of the times.
Kramer vs. Feminism: What’s It Really About?
The tearful reconcilation from the final moments of Kramer vs. Kramer
Columbia Pictures
When Streep won the Academy Award for her role as Joanna, it wasn’t for “Leading Woman,” but instead “Best Supporting Actress.” Even in the film’s opening credits, Dustin’s name leads the credits, followed by the title, and then Streep’s name. Speaking to the press after her achievement, she addressed criticism that the film could be perceived as anti-feminist, saying, “I don’t feel that’s true at all. I feel that the basis of feminism is something that has to do with liberating men and women from prescribed roles.”
Streep’s response was enlightened for 1980, and remains so today.
Corman might have intended Kramer vs. Kramer to champion “men’s rights,” but the author’s intent isn’t necessarily how a piece of art is interpreted. Streep went beyond the vilification of Joanna to find her soul, breaking the anti-feminist material and reshaping it with her voice to create a meaningful three-dimensional character.
What began as a biased book turned out to be something more complex when it came to the big screen, digging up the feminist diamond in the rough that would have otherwise been left buried. Queen Meryl felt the connection to this unheard voice crying out for help — and lifted her up to prove the power of what happens when you listen to a woman.
Kramer vs. Kramer is available on Amazon, Apple TV, and many other streaming or on-demand platforms.
