(4 of 5)
Perhaps some moviegoers will side with either Ted or Joanna after the trial, but most probably will not. Many are likely to identify most readily with the film's principal supporting character, Margaret, a divorced neighbor, played superbly by Jane Alexander. Margaret begins by encouraging Joanna's decision to walk out, later becomes a confidante of Ted's and ends up emotionally drained, torn by both on the witness stand. After the judge has delivered his verdict, it is still difficult for the audience, as well as Joanna, Ted and Margaret, to decide who has really won. The ambiguity lingers to the final frame of the film. Like the first shot, the last one is a close-up of Streep—only now she seems even more distressed than before. Her face dissolves from one contradictory emotion to another in such disturbing succession that she reopens all the wounds and conflicts of the drama. The moment is powerful enough to nearly obliterate the film's resolution, one which some will find all too pat.
Benton gives Kramer vs. Kramer its lifelike quality by clearing away the artifice that most American film makers use to shape human experience into so-called entertainment. His screenplay strips away unnecessary detail and background from Gorman's novel; his direction concentrates on the characters' feelings above all else. Music is never used to heighten a scene, and the camera moves only when the actors' wanderings force it to do so. Benton's focus is so tight that Kramer shows a far more domestic and grittier view of Manhattan than the Allen and Mazursky films. The cinematographer is Nestor Almendros, a frequent collaborator of François Truffaut's and Eric Rohmer's and a brilliant portraitist.
Truffaut was the director whom Producer Stanley Jaffe first hired for Kramer. When scheduling conflicts developed, Jaffe turned to Benton. Though he has directed only two previous movies, Bad Company (an antic western with Jeff Bridges) and The Late Show (an eccentric detective story with Art Carney and Lily Tomlin), Benton's career stretches back over a decade. With his longtime writing partner, David Newman, he co-authored the most influential film script of the '60s, Bonnie and Clyde, which, like Kramer, leavened conflict with smart wit. He and Newman also collaborated on such diverse '70s movies as What's Up Doc?and Superman. Benton's crisp pictorial style, which has become more pronounced with each film, can be traced to his years as art director for the graphically innovative Esquire magazine of the early '60s. His preference for characters over plot—something of a flaw in The Late Show—comes from Truffaut, a friend and mentor since Bonnie and Clyde. In Kramer, Benton pays tribute to the French director by using snatches of the Vivaldi mandolin concerto; the same music turned up in The Wild Child, Truffaut's masterpiece about another relationship between a man and a young boy.
Benton makes no extravagant claims for his new film. Says he: "The picture isn't meant to be a film about the in justices of the legal system or about whether fathers or mothers are better qualified to raise kids. The film is, above all, a love story and a story about marriage.