Word: benton
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...that point, Ted Kramer would seem to be an irredeemable monster, but Kramer will not allow the audience any rushes to judgment. No sooner has Joanna left than Benton starts to direct sympathy to Ted, who must now go about the business of raising his son alone. Forced again to choose between the demands of his career and his responsibilities at home, the hero does not make the same mistake twice. At first tentatively, and then wholeheartedly, he throws himself into his relationship with his son Billy (Justin Henry). As he does so, Kramer offers a spectacle that is rare...
Usually films contain such transformations only for plot purposes, and they achieve them by fast jumps forward in time. Benton instead undertakes the tough task of putting Ted's changes onscreen, bit by painstaking...
...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...
...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...
...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...