Word: oneness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This is accomplished in a series of extraordinary scenes between Hoffman and Henry that form the entire middle stretch of the movie and well illustrate F. Scott Fitzgerald's dictum that "action is character." Together these two actors-one a movie star, the other a little boy with no previous acting experience-create what is probably the most credible father-son relationship ever seen in an American film. As Ted and Billy slowly come to terms with each other, there is none of the cuteness or sentimentality that so often clots movies about parents and children...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...One of the reasons Justin was chosen was because the interview made clear that he has a very good relationship with his real father, Cliff Henry, a portfolio manager for J.C. Penney. Another was that he had never acted before. Explains Director Robert Benton: "We didn't want anyone with bad habits." Still, after seeing the movie, audiences may be excused if they think he was born before the cameras, so true and so good is his performance...