(3 of 5)
To capture the nuances of Ted's constantly shifting moods, Hoffman gives a performance of nearly infinite shading. Angry and bitter at the outset, his face pasty with panic, he gradually interjects notes of tenderness and compassion into his role. Ted's new values develop so delicately as to be almost invisible until a scene in which g he reassures his son that the child is not to blame for his mother's departure. Sitting at Billy's bedside, Ted explains that "Mommy left because I made her try to be a certain kind of wife. I realized she tried for so long to make me happy, and when she couldn't and tried to talk to me, I was too wrapped up to listen." If Hoffman were still the glib hustler of the early part of the film, this self-recriminating speech would be a jolt—a screenwriter's ruse. But Hoffman's performance has so carefully delineated the alterations in Ted that his generous confession of past sins seems completely natural.
Justin Henry is no less effective.
Though as angelic in appearance as any child model in a TV commercial, he has none of the self-consciousness that often defeats kids onscreen. When he fights with his father over the dinner table or cries for his mommy in the night, the emotions are not italicized but spontaneous: Benton had the sense to let his young star improvise rather than rehearse to the point of slickness. Henry's character also grows—as he must during the course of Kramer. When Billy and a dejected Ted prepare a French-toast breakfast together near the end of the movie, the son tries to cheer up the father with the same forced smiles and reassuring gestures that Ted used on Henry in a parallel scene much earlier on. It is a masterly way of letting the audience know indirectly that Ted and Billy, once near strangers to each other, have formed one of life's most durable bonds.
That is why, when Joanna finally reappears, it is hard to accept her. The woman who earned affection when she courageously walked out of her imprisoning marriage is now a villain: she wants to take Billy away from the father who sacrificed his work and restructured his life for his son. But again, Benton challenges the audience rather than let it leap to a pat moral position. As Joanna undergoes cross-examination at the custody trial, her virtues ever so slowly reappear. Because she has now regained her selfesteem, she seems better able than before to be a good mother to her child. The sudden pull of Streep's performance confuses loyalties even further. As Joanna gives her own account of her marriage and her efforts to recover from it, Streep painfully sheds layer after layer of the character's past. In a few minutes, she creates an entire life onscreen: the loving bride, the defeated, self-loathing wife and, at last, an independent woman. It is a devastating film-within-a-film—one that rocks not only the audience but also the ex-husband, who watches in the courtroom.