How 'Kramer vs. Kramer' hit a national nerve, 40 years before 'Marriage Story'

The big Christmas movies in 1979 were supposed to be Steven Spielberg’s "1941," Disney’s "The Black Hole" and "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."

But a small courtroom drama bested them and every other holiday release, becoming the highest-grossing film of the year. "Kramer vs. Kramer," which opened 40 years ago this week, just as the revolutionary 1970s crawled to a finish, tapped into an inflammatory issue defining the times.

The film’s plot was little more than TV-movie fodder: A housewife (Meryl Streep) abruptly leaves her career-driven husband (Dustin Hoffman) and their 6-year-old son (Justin Henry) in a quest to find herself, only to return 15 months later to sue her now ex-husband for custody of the child.

But with divorce rates at their highest ever, director Robert Benton’s adaption of Avery Corman’s 1977 novel touched a national nerve.

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The film punctuated a decade of a war between the sexes, where marriage itself had come under fire. If the anger on display in the film by Hoffman’s 30-something ad executive is understandable – wife Joanna’s top-of-story desertion was both sudden and ill-explained – it spoke to a larger sense of anger felt among men of his generation, raised to view marriage through a self-reflecting prism. (Ted’s reaction to his wife’s decision, railing to a family friend: “Can’t you understand what she’s done to me?”)

For her part, Joanna Kramer was mirroring the dilemma facing many women of the same post-war generation, born into a black-and-white world that had taken on color. “All my life,” she later attempts to explain to Ted, “I’ve felt like … somebody’s wife or mother or daughter. Even when we were together, I never knew who I was.”

It was new territory for the big screen. The New York Times wrote at the time: “In a country where the lives of 1 million children are changed each year by divorce, the moviemakers could hardly have picked a more provocative theme. The plot of the film, one that would have sounded bizarre a decade ago, seems entirely plausible in today's world of mothers seeking self-fulfillment and fathers seeking custody of young children.”

"Kramer vs. Kramer" packed theaters, accelerated conversations and sparked debate. It also framed what family studies professor Angie Schock, writing in 2003’s "American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia," called “an emergent men's movement” of the 1970s that challenged “restricted gender-defined family roles.”

Men were becoming thinkers and feelers, not just doers. Fragile and emotional. Getting in touch with their feelings, as it was known at the time. Especially onscreen: Overachiever Ted Kramer is seen unmoored by the simple task of making French toast for his son. His single-father fear and sadness are on wide-screen display.

"Kramer vs. Kramer" was, in fact, one of no fewer than six big-name movies released in the final three months of 1979 that showcased this evolving American male. "Starting Over" (with Burt Reynolds), "10" (Dudley Moore), "And Justice for All" (Al Pacino), "The Electric Horseman" (Robert Redford) and "Chapter Two" (James Caan) each presented portraits of successful career men at mid-life, wrestling with emotional issues.

It was a long way from "True Grit" and "Patton," which started the '70s, with John Wayne and George C. Scott winning Oscars for prototypical masculine roles.

"Kramer vs. Kramer" came down to a courtroom battle that pit tradition against change as much as it did spouse against spouse. Amid an amplifying national conversation about divorce and, especially, its consequences, its everybody-wins resolution – mother is awarded custody; mother decides at the last minute the child is better left with father – made for a satisfying onscreen drama on the way to Oscar glory for Benton, Hoffman, Streep and the film itself.

But it belied the reality of what was becoming a less easily resolved real-life legal staple. And still is today, even as divorce rates have dwindled. Noah Baumbach’s just-out "Marriage Story," with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, offers a post-split custody case of its own, informed by the director’s own experiences.

Forty years after "Kramer vs. Kramer," the film’s exploration of gender roles and female identity is also front page all over again against the backdrop of another revolutionary movement called #MeToo.

Jim McKairnes, a contributor to USA TODAY, is the author of "All in the Decade: 70 Things About '70s TV That Turned Ten Years Into a Revolution."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Kramer vs. Kramer' 40th anniversary: Why it touched a national nerve