Adapted from the novel Kramer versus Kramer by Avery Corman
Ted Kramer is quite satisfied with his life. He has a decent job that he's good at, he lives in a nice apartment in New York City with his beautiful wife, Joanna, who stays home to run the house and care for their young son, Billy. But one day Ted comes home to discover that Joanna, extraordinarily unhappy with her life, has packed and is leaving both him and Billy. It takes major effort, but eventually, Ted begins to adjust to his new role as a single father. But not long after Ted and Billy have finally gotten used to life without her, Joanna returns to sue for custody.
This is one of those adaptations in which the premise and the main characters are basically the same, but most of the details are different. The novel starts further back than the film, giving the background of how Ted and Joanna met, the early years of their marriage, Billy's birth, and Joanna's growing frustrations with being a stay-at-home mother. All of this is merely implied or briefly alluded to in the movie, which begins with the day Joanna packs. Initially, I thought this made Joanna more sympathetic in the book, since readers get a better understanding of why she leaves. But when Joanna comes back in the book she seems very cold, and even though she's grown a little bit, she's still incredibly self-centered. In the movie she seems more warm and genuine in her reasons for returning. Part of this might be Meryl Streep's incredible gift for making even the most despicable characters somehow sympathetic, but in addition to that, the things she says and does at the very end were drastically different, and made her seem like a much better person in the movie than the book. I don't want to spoil too much, but suffice it to say that while Joanna essentially makes the same decision in both versions, her motivation is significantly different. In the book, she is still clearly thinking of herself first, whereas in the movie she's thinking of what's best for Billy.
One change that might seem minor but had a major impact is the movie made Billy two years older than he was in the book. That doesn't sound like much, but in the book Billy was still in pre-school when his mother abandoned him, whereas in the movie he was in first grade. In the book, Billy is young enough that, while he clearly misses his mother, he accepts her absence as just the way things are. Movie Billy is enough older than book Billy that not only is he more disturbed by her abandonment, but he also believes he has something to do with it, which does not really occur to book Billy. This age change also means that Billy is already in school all day every weekday in the movie, whereas he's not in the book, so book Ted hires a housekeeper, which film Ted doesn't ever have a need for.
In addition to the housekeeper, the book shows a lot of other adults in Ted's life, like his parents, brother, in-laws, friends, and women he dates, who are eliminated from the film. The movie pretty much only keeps Ted's boss, one girlfriend (because Billy encountering a naked stranger on his way to the bathroom and asking if she liked fried chicken was apparently too priceless to cut out), and a neighbor friend who is a single mother (although her name and specific circumstances are changed). By getting rid of a bunch of extra characters, the movie has more time to focus on Ted and Billy themselves and less on what everyone thinks of them, which I feel was a good decision, especially since Billy was a little older. Most of the major events of the book made their way into the film, albeit with slightly different details, but the minor incidents were changed to accommodate this shift in focus. In the same vein, Ted loses his job right before the custody hearing in both versions (and manages to quickly get a new one for significantly less pay), but in the book it's because the company he's working for has been bought out and everyone's being laid off, which also happened earlier with a different company he worked for. The book makes it clear that losing his job was not even remotely his fault, which makes it completely unfair that they use it against him at the hearing. In the movie, he has the same job until just before the hearing, and now he's being let go because his work has been suffering while he's preoccupied with Billy. Overall, Billy is a more important character in the movie than the book, and I think the story is told more effectively that way. The book is good, but the film is better, so this Oscar was thoroughly deserved.
This Best Picture Winner will be followed by another Best Picture Winner: Ordinary People, based on the novel by Judith Guest.
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