Engrossing drama. Brilliant character study. Bravura film with emotionally complex performances. A sign of the times.

These are the songs of praise for Kramer vs. Kramer, Robert Benton's absorbing Best Picture winner from 1979. These are also the terms used for elevating rather narrowly focused material into being something more than the result of its individual creative components.

Of course I'm not saying there aren't a set of terrific performances at the heart of this very quiet movie that packs an emotional wallop. Instead it's to acknowledge that the film's brilliance, aside from its various technical and creative merits, stems from its attempt to look at the underside of the American family coming apart at the seams.

In braving the social problem of divorce, the movie adapts Avery Corman's novel and works at even-handedly exploring the issue from all sides of the divide. However true this may be, our sympathy is decidedly concerned with the father who is forced through circumstances to become a better man while the mother is largely considered a foil to his maturation. Between them is their son who is, surprisingly, a convincing young performer ill at ease with the overnight change in his domestic balance.

Dustin Hoffman is Ted Kramer, an upwardly mobile advertising executive with a troubled housewife named Joanna (Meryl Streep) and a seven-year old son named Billy (Justin Henry). One night Ted returns home from work to find that Joanna is leaving him. She first explains she's not fit to be Billy's mother in her current state of distraction and then she explains that she no longer loves him.

Wife gone, career ascension in the balance and an innocent seven-year old to care for, Ted finds himself quickly overwhelmed by new responsibilities. Learning to prioritize his son rather than be slavishly devoted to his job he gradually loses pace at work but also discovers true fulfillment in becoming a hands-on parent for the very first time. Father and son bond in the absence of Mom and their lives find a new balance just as Joanna returns to stake her claim on the life of her son.

Explaining to Ted how she's become a professional woman with a newly discovered well of personal fulfillment, she wants Billy's sole custody thereby pitching the two into a seesaw battle of entirely personal proportions. Both are forced to hire cutthroat lawyers. Both start out intending to assert their rights but end up questioning the motivation for their selfish behavior. Both try balancing fairness with their post-divorce lives and still they end up spilling vitriolic of memories, old conversations and misguided actions that come back to haunt them.

Despite Ted's care for Billy, and despite Billy's desire for an unbroken home, Joanna's lawyer proves more effective in battling for her cause. With the case decided largely on the basis of gendered ideas about parenting, Ted loses custody of Billy and ends up with weekend visitations. As Joanna shows up to pick up her son, she and Ted find a point of decency in the midst of their quickening tragedy. Both agree that their role as Billy's parents continues without contest and in this honest expression of sadness and dedication they step into their new lives, heartbroken and hopeful.

Instantly a hit as well as a poignant drama centered on the '70s phenomenon of increasing divorce and single-parent homes, Kramer vs. Kramer nonetheless reversed the more typical broken marriage story. By emphasizing Ted's professional comeuppance and parental turn into a caring father, the narrative ark eschews the more common plight of mothers who are left with children and absentee husbands. Though this re-centering on Ted is a result of the source novel and Benton's adaptation, not to mention Hoffman's star power and acting abilities, it's also somehow disingenuous when considering the truth of the underlying problem giving rise to the film.

Am I proposing that Joanna should have been the heroine rather than a convincing support player? Perhaps. Am I struck by how well the film expresses the father-son bond and ignores the corresponding mother-son bond? Yes. Am I convinced that the movie is a worthwhile dramatic production? Of course. But I am troubled, nonetheless, by its reliance on forced-to-be-sacrificial fathers and selfish mothers even though both end up being concerned for their child.

Commercially 1979 was defined by such escapist fare as Moonraker, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alien, The Amityville Horror and The Muppet Movie. Above all these pictures Kramer vs. Kramer resonated more deeply to out gross them all in the domestic marketplace on the way to collecting its share of year-end awards. Such popular success indicates how adult dramas can overpower action-adventure stories and special effects extravaganzas at the box office when showcasing brilliant performers breathing life into an intelligent script.

Running for top honors at the Academy Awards against All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now, Breaking Away and Norma Rae it should be also noted that Kramer vs. Kramer wasn't forced to compete with Manhattan and The Marriage of Maria Braun. Discounting the city symphony because of Woody Allen's previous Best Picture Oscar in 1977 for Annie Hall and eliminating the German film because it's German, Kramer vs. Kramer defined its year as much because of its social relevance as for its brilliant filmmaking.

I've only recently seen Benton's movie in its entirety and was struck by the journey of father and son sketched across its length. I felt sympathy for all three principal characters and I felt relief at how the film validates the seriousness of divorce. Its focus on a destructive custody battle shows the difficulty of dissolving marriages and it faces the problem head-on to assess the impact on a child.

What I was equally struck by, however, is how much I don't think Kramer vs. Kramer is an accurate measure of 1979's best filmmaking. Sure Benton's adaptation and direction are wonderfully lean with terrific long takes that allow Hoffman, Streep and Henry to inhabit their on-screen space and imbue their performances with a lived-in feel. Sure there are some remarkably poignant sequences done entirely without dialogue like the father-son breakfast demonstrating the balance Ted and Billy achieve in their bachelor's lives. There are other strong moments as well like Ted's confrontation with Billy over ice cream, or Ted and Joanna's courtroom confrontations or their final exchange at Billy's pick-up to end the film. Despite all this I don't believe Kramer vs. Kramer is the kind of movie that stands above time and speaks across generations.

Perhaps my idea of legacy is overstated. Even so I can't help but discount part of Kramer vs. Kramer's impact because the problem of divorce and shared custody is no longer remarkable. In fact it's an everyday concern that remains tragic in what it represents about the dissolution of loving relationships yet the issue is now, unfortunately, wholly pedestrian.

For every Ted Kramer making the best of difficult times of which he's partially the cause and solution there are several more Joanna Kramers who are left unmentioned. For every Billy Kramer struggling to understand why his parents can't live together there are many thousands more similarly alarmed and upset with the way the world changes.

We are now a nation built upon the embers of divorce. This sad fact is well evidenced by Kramer vs. Kramer but as far as mind-blowing cinema is concerned, I side with Apocalypse Now and Manhattan as the year's bets movies with Benton's social issue movie as an uncrowned also ran.