The Kramers were the biggest winners of the Oscars that year. However, only from the perspective of the story, what he tells is an ordinary story. Such an ordinary story is played out in countless families all over the world every day.
As a full-time wife, the wife ran away from home because she couldn't bear her husband's indifference. The husband was forced to take care of his son in a hurry. After 18 months, the woman had a successful career and returned to fight for the custody of the child. The two sides obtained mutual understanding in the confrontation in the court.
The name of the film Kramer VS Kramer vividly reflects this confrontational relationship. I am not sure whether such things were new in the American family environment in 1979. But today, such a dilemma is uncommon, and the irony is that today, facing the problems left by the film nearly 40 years ago, we still cannot give a satisfactory answer.
Many people say that this movie is telling us how to be a competent parent, a competent partner. And I think, how to prevent each family from falling into such a predicament again, may require us to think more. This is more than just advocating mutual understanding between the two sides, or making more contributions for the children.
Mrs. Kramer dedicated five years to her children and sacrificed her favorite career. She is unwilling. He hopes to share such psychological fluctuations with her husband, but the husband always ignores his feelings for the reason of being too busy at work, which eventually led to her running away from home. But in retrospect, the husband’s lack of consideration is only a fuse, and the inevitable conflict between career and family is the root of this problem, isn’t it? The explosives piled in the warehouse were ignited by a spark. It is not who ignited a spark, but why so many explosives are piled together to pose a safety hazard!
We also saw the follow-up, Mr. Kramer took care of Billy himself. For this reason, I missed the meeting and missed the deadline for the submission of the paper, which caused the company to lose its major customers, and eventually ended up being fired. During this period, Mrs. Kramer's job improved and she also received a decent salary. If we put aside the emotional halo of family affection, we will find that the child is like a nuclear button, no matter which one of the parents in the family presses, it will cause a devastating blow to the other's career.
And our company will only urge parents not to forget the meeting when they are in a hurry, forcing them to spend more time and energy on the company. At the end of the film, the couple reached a reconciliation, and the elevator doors slowly closed. But what happens when the elevator doors are opened again countless times in the future? Mr. Clem will suffer a loss of $3,500 less in salary in the new company. Perhaps for a long period of time, he will use this job to maintain the balance between his career and taking care of his children. In other words, he may never get back to the industry status of the previous advertising company.
A good film and a complicated question can be interpreted from many angles. In this film, some people saw the difficulty of maintaining family relationships, some saw the awakening of feminist consciousness, and what I saw was the lack of public facilities in early childhood education.
The film seems to pit children and careers naturally, and in real life, even if we don't want to admit it sometimes, this is indeed the case. We have come up with many patterns to try to solve this problem. In the era in the film, we adopted the family model of male lead and female lead; after that, we tried to invite the previous generation to help, and the work of discussing the generational relationship under one roof ushered in an explosive growth. None of these plans can help us achieve happiness, and the current younger generation seems to have found the ultimate solution, not marrying or having children, and solving the problem from the root.
Our public power finally began to worry at this stage, but we must admit that even in today's environment, we are still not doing enough. High-standard industry thresholds, systematic monitoring systems, and even the number of childcare facilities, especially care facilities for infants from 6 months to 3 years old, are far from enough. The tragedy of the Kramers is still repeated over and over again.
Don’t call on everyone to reflect on how to become a qualified parent after watching this film! Because Mr. Kramer is not only a husband, but also a father, Ms. Kramer is not and not only a wife, but also a mother. They are also an advertiser and a designer, and letting them live, work, and progress decently in this society as advertisers and designers should also be a duty of our society.
View more about Kramer vs. Kramer reviews
