The Weekly Gravy #167

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) – ****

I knew I’d face a few difficulties with Kramer vs. Kramer. The biggest is that I struggle to feel sympathy for any character who leaves their children. Joanna Kramer has her reasons – and, later in the film, we come to realize those reasons were deepened by her husband’s attitudes – but she abruptly leaves her son and husband, even leaving behind the suitcase she’s packed when he grabs it away while trying to get her to talk about what’s going on, because she’s suffocated in her life as a housewife, as a stay-at-home mother, and because she needs to find out who she really is.

44 years after Kramer opened, with divorce far more common and with far more women able to combine marriage and motherhood with fulfilling careers, her course of action may seem rather drastic. Hell, my mother had her job before marrying my father – as did Joanna – but in her case, she stayed at her job for the rest of her life, missing little work even when she had me; if she had to take me to work, she just tucked my carrier under her desk. But then, my parents were far happier together than Ted and Joanna Kramer.

It’s also a bit harder to appreciate this film knowing how Dustin Hoffman treated Meryl Streep during production, harder to appreciate his performance knowing that and later allegations of harassment against him, and harder to appreciate this film in the wake of Marriage Story, a film which gives more balance to the viewpoints of (ex) husband and wife and which, I’d argue, cuts far deeper in portraying not only an unhealthy relationship but the horrors of custody disputes.

But it is a great film, and if I’m not so sure it deserved to win the Oscar for Best Picture (or Best Director), I certainly understand why it did, and even more why it won Oscars for Hoffman, Streep, and its script, even if the Oscar went to writer-director Robert Benton and the film was so heavily improvised and drew so much on Hoffman’s own divorce that Benton suggested they share credit. It’s a film which deals less with the particulars of how a marriage ends than with how people rebuild themselves in the wake of that, and it tells that story with conviction.

Sure, you might not forget that you’re watching Dustin Hoffman navigate the difficulties of single fatherhood, that you’re watching an A-list star botching French toast (hilariously, I might add), buying groceries, and reading bedtime stories. But the illusion holds, whether he’s playing the lighter moments, the heavier moments (his monologue about why Joanna left might be the best thing he’s ever done), the quieter moments, or the intense moments that hint at why Ted was not so easy to be married to (the smashed wine glass, which Streep wasn’t warned about, is a chilling moment).

Streep has the greater challenge, having far less screentime and having to play a character who, in the source novel, was so unsympathetic that Streep refused to play her before she’d been asked to. Joanna Kramer remains something of an enigma to us, I think, because she’s something of an enigma to herself – as she points out, she was always defined in terms of the people she was related to. Ironically, in the film Joanna is only ever shown to us in relation to Ted and their son Billy; we never see her on her own, at work, at leisure, or with the man she’s currently seeing.

For me, the best moments of Streep’s performance are in those moments when Joanna is struggling against the weight of her situation and her choices, often silently, as she balances what is expected of her, what she believes is correct, with what she sees to the contrary, that Ted has become a far better father than before and that, as she finally admits, “I came here to take my son home…and I realized he already is home.”

As Billy, Justin Henry, aged 7 during production, became the youngest Oscar nominee in history, ironically losing to Melvyn Douglas for Being There, who reputedly objected to competing with a child. Henry does very well here; you never feel like he’s reciting his lines, and his dynamic with Hoffman is thoroughly convincing, whether the moment is dramatic, comic, or somewhere in between (the argument over the ice cream, a wholly improvised sequence). And Jane Alexander was also nominated as the downstairs neighbor and family friend who’s gone through a divorce of her own, and likewise feels pleasantly real; kind and supportive, but not simply there to be kind and supportive.

Néstor Almendros’ cinematography was nominated; it’s nowhere near what he accomplished with Days of Heaven, but there are some effective images, like Joanna watching Billy from the coffeeshop window and the scene in the park when Ted tells Billy about the impending new arrangement. And the film was nominated for its editing, which moves the story smoothly along (for the most part) in a series of vignettes that cover a year and a half in the space of 105 minutes. Not nominated were veteran Howard Duff’s performance as Ted’s attorney (a fine example of unassuming competence) or George Coe’s turn as Ted’s boss, who seems by today’s standards shockingly unsympathetic.

Kramer, a fairly low-key film, managed to beat the epic nightmare of Apocalypse Now and the masochistic extravaganza of All That Jazz; I haven’t seen either of those films in a long time, so I can’t say if it was as bad a choice as it seems on paper. What I can say is that Kramer is a very fine film, one which speaks to anyone who’s gone through a custody battle, either as a parent or as a child, and that relatability, combined with quiet craftsmanship, triumphed over the towering ambition of the competition. That I understand, and don’t strongly object, may be valediction enough.

Score: 88

Midnight Cowboy (1969) – ****

Well, if I’m going to watch one Best Picture winner with Dustin Hoffman I haven’t seen, why not watch the other?

This was actually the only Picture winner of the 60s I hadn’t seen, even though I haven’t watched most of them in years; In the Heat of the Night is the only winner of the decade I’ve fully reviewed on here. That makes sense, since it would’ve been far less appropriate or resonant for my younger self than My Fair Lady and Oliver! – and how amusing that the only winner to be rated G on its initial release should be followed by the only winner to be rated X, however little it was merited (it’s now rated R).

Of course, I now have to ask myself if this was really a better choice for the Oscar than Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, another film rooted in the friendship of two men, a film which, despite its lighter tone, actually ends with more death than this one – but there, we don’t see Butch and Sundance die, we get that freeze-frame which traps them in the amber of myth, while here poor Rizzo dies staring out of a bus window at the Florida he’s dreamt of for years, and we end with poor Joe Buck holding his body as they roll into Miami.

I loved Butch when I was younger, but haven’t gone back to it in years; would I still rank it so high, or would I see the tragedy of Midnight Cowboy and its relentless deconstruction of the American success story as more truthful, more powerful than Butch‘s witty entertainment? Even if I cherish Butch just as much now as then, there’s no denying that Cowboy was a worthy winner on its merits, not just for the film but for John Schlesinger’s direction.

Dreams, memories, and fantasies pervade Cowboy. The film begins with the sounds of a Hollywood western, paired with the sight of an empty drive-in theater in the harsh light of day, before we see Joe himself, cheerfully preparing to split town while everyone he knows calls out “Where’s that Joe Buck?” He puts on his cowboy outfit, itself a fantasy (“I ain’t a f’real cowboy – but I am one helluva stud!”), acting out his fantasy of telling off his boss, then struts down the street as the credits roll and “Everybody’s Talkin'” plays on the soundtrack, and as he goes in to quit his job, his enthusiasm is balanced by the indifference and skepticism of everyone around him.

As he rides the bus to New York, we get his flickering memories of his grandmother Sally (Ruth White), and we get hints that their relationship was a troubled one, with intimations of abuse – but only stream-of-consciousness hints, instead of the detailed explanations given in James Leo Herlihy’s novel. And it’s here that we first feel the full power of Hugh A. Robertson’s editing, as the long journey is condensed into a few short episodes, interwoven with a collage of memories – which also includes thoughts of his lost love Annie (Jennifer Salt) and the traumatic events which wrenched them apart.

These memories invade Joe’s dreams as well, and as the film progresses and he first meets Rizzo, being ripped off by him before finding him again and, having nowhere else to stay, moving into the abandoned tenement Rizzo calls home. His dreams blend the horrifying events of the past and fold them into his troubled present, as he pursues Rizzo into the subway but cannot catch him, or sees Rizzo among his past tormentors. The stylized imagery and the unsettling atmosphere are a credit to Schlesinger’s direction, Roberston’s editing, and Adam Holender’s cinematography.

Rizzo has his own, tragically impractical dream, and in one sequence we get to see his fantasy of being in Miami with Joe, of running along the beach without his present limp, and of wooing hordes of wealthy widows – but even this fantasy is slowly curdled by reality, as he shoots craps poolside with the widows and, flanked by waiters in tuxedos and using top-line buffet equipment, cooks up the same improvised hash he made for Joe a few scenes earlier. The scene may be on the nose in that late 60s way, but it works, just as the party scene later in the film works (for me because it shows the Warhol/Factory scene for the pretentious self-indulgence it was).

But then, just about everything in the film works. Jon Voight gives perhaps the best performance of his career as Joe, eager to make something of himself but too naive to avoid making calamitous mistakes, comically foolish but poignantly sensitive, especially when he finds someone to care about, someone worth changing his dreams for. Hoffman’s Rizzo is a touch broad at times – his accent work isn’t seamless – but it’s a committed turn in depicting just how pathetic and lonely the poor bastard is, how much he needs the sense of home and family Joe can offer even as his time is running out.

In smaller roles, there’s the Oscar-nominated Sylvia Miles as Joe’s first client, who’s offended at being asked to pay (an effective small role, but I’m not sure it merited a nomination), the Globe-nominated Brenda Vaccaro as a far more receptive client (a stronger turn with a playful sensibility), John McGiver as the grinning religious fanatic (quite funny), Bob Balaban as a self-loathing gay student (pitiable), and Barnard Hughes as the self-loathing middle-aged gay businessman (painfully masochistic).

The Oscar for Schlesinger’s direction was more deserved than that for Waldo Salt’s screenplay, but it’s certainly an effective script; the nod for Robertson’s editing wasn’t just well deserved, it was historically significant – he was the first African American nominated in the category. Voight and Hoffman were both up for Best Actor (though Hoffman’s really supporting – it’s 25 minutes before Rizzo appears), and Voight should’ve won, but they both lost to John Wayne – ironic, given how the film cites his image.

Score: 91

Thanksgiving (2023) – ***½

Well before it becomes a slasher film, Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving has proven itself a horror film, beginning with a chaotic “Black Friday” sale that takes place on Thanksgiving itself, thanks to the unassuming greed of “RightMart” manager Thomas Wright (Rick Hoffman) and his new wife Kathleen (Karen Cliche) – which also encompasses skimping on hired security. When Thomas’ teenage daughter Jessica (Nell Verlaque) reluctantly helps her friends sneak into the store ahead of the increasingly hostile crowds, their mockery of those waiting outside leads to a fatal rush on the store.

At least three people die in the ensuing chaos: a security guard is trampled to death by the crowd, a shopper cuts his jugular on broken glass and dies clutching a free waffle iron (which is snatched from his cold, dead hands), and Amanda Collins (Gina Gershon) is killed by the carts of two bickering shoppers, being partially scalped before expiring. Sheriff Eric Newton (Patrick Dempsey) must fire his gun into the air to try and get the crowd under control, prompting the (bloody) title to appear, and all the while Jessica’s friend Evan (Tomaso Sanelli) records the events, making a viral video out of the tragedy.

And did I mention this is all taking place in Plymouth, Massachusetts? The symbolism and commentary comes thick and fast here, as we get critiques of consumerism and capitalism along with nods to the problematic history of Thanksgiving itself, which are only underlined later in the film as the killer presents themselves as John Carver, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony, who has here been turned into a Halloween mask, while his cabin (a historical site) is the setting for a RightMart commercial featuring the Wright family, who are prepared to go ahead with another Thanksgiving day sale, having dodged liability for the previous year’s events.

There’s also the critique of social media and the alienation that comes from viewing life through its prisms; Roth and screenwriter Jeff Rendell may not have made another Medium Cool, but it should come as no surprise that Evan will pay dearly for turning a horrifying event into viral entertainment.

But just who is making Evan (and quite a few others) pay for their actions is the central mystery of the film, and it’s hard to pick out the culprit from the lengthy list of characters, most of whom I haven’t even mentioned yet; Jessica (who deeply regrets the chaos and begs her father to cancel the sale) and Sheriff Newton emerge as the central characters, but it’s pretty close to an ensemble piece, and the script does what it can to make the characters relatively believable; even McCarty (Joe Delfin), who initially seems like a greedy, trigger-happy sleaze, has shades to his character.

The result is at once more complex and thoughtful than you might expect from a feature-length version of what was a gag trailer in Grindhouse 16 years ago, and a touch disappointing as the film sets up more than it really pays off, with the final solution to the mystery seeming just a bit pat and arbitrary. I can’t fault the film for trying to be more than a holiday slasher, and it succeeds for at least the first two acts, but it simply doesn’t stick the landing as well as I’d like.

It’s still a very solid entertainment, delivering both hilariously over-the-top kills (my favorite is probably when one character gets the prow of a parade-float Mayflower through their head) and well-orchestrated suspense (there’s a cat-and-mouse scene featuring Kathleen that’s especially nerve-wracking), while also giving us characters worth following, brought to life by a very capable cast. Dempsey’s earnest authority and Verlaque’s profoundly conflicted final girl are the standouts, but Hoffman’s smarm (and that moustache), Cliche’s glamorous greed, and Jalen Thomas Brooks as Jessica’s embittered ex add much to a surprisingly strong ensemble.

I’ve never seen any of Roth’s other films; I’m still most familiar with him as the brash (dare I say grating) Bear Jew in Inglourious Basterds. I’m not sure my regard for Thanksgiving and the way he balances genre thrills with human drama are enough to make me seek out the likes of Hostel, but they are enough to earn my recommendation – and if you think it’s a bit late for Thanksgiving now, by all means give it a look next November.

Score: 80