Word: welling
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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...
...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...
...creating the character," says Director Robert Benton. "We tape-recorded our talks and took endless notes on his language. Everything was carefully worked out." If Kramer is brash, egocentric and often obnoxious, so too is Hoffman. If Kramer is tender, loving and often vulnerable, then Hoffman is as well. Like Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, he has turned the screen into a mirror, a magical looking glass into his own head and heart...
Hoffman understands kids so well that he finds it a particular injustice that nature has provided for only one sex, the opposite one, to carry children and give birth. When he was preparing to play Ted Kramer, he kept staring at young mothers and pregnant women, especially pregnant women wheeling children in baby carriages...
...agent, but Streep played Miss Julie at Vassar. Beginning her professional stage career in New York only four years ago, she conquered prized roles in Shakespeare (Measure for Measure, Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew), Chekhov (The Cherry Orchard) and Brecht-Weill (Happy End), as well as in works by Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. This repertory training came to Meryl because she was ready for it; her education went on in public, but critics and audiences did the learning. Director Arvin Brown expresses what threatens to become a bromide when he calls her "the most talented actress...