“Kramer vs. Kramer wouldn’t be half as good as it is—half as intriguing and absorbing—if the movie had taken sides,” Roger Ebert observed in 1979. Helmed by director and screenwriter Robert Benton, who based his script on Avery Corman’s 1977 novel of the same name, the film centered instead on two characters, Ted (Dustin Hoffman) and Joanna (Meryl Streep), with a great deal to learn: Joanna about herself, which she does largely offscreen, and Ted about being a father. (Three food scenes—two with French toast, one with ice cream—help to chart his progress with their young son, Billy, played by Justin Henry.) An instant classic, Kramer vs. Kramer swept the 1980 Academy Awards, nabbing best picture, best director, best actor (for Hoffman, his first), best supporting actress (for Streep, her first), and best adapted screenplay.
Shoot the Moon (1982)
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection
In Alan Parker’s Shoot the Moon, one of this list’s more dramatic entries, Albert Finney and Diane Keaton are Mr. and Mrs. Dunlap, a writer and his wife trying (and often failing) to “be grown-up” about breaking up. Marin County, California—watery and remote—is the setting as Finney and Keaton hurtle from pained resentment to jealousy, lust, and violent anger. In the role of Sherry, the Dunlaps’ all-knowing eldest daughter, Dana Hill is also searing. “The characters in Shoot the Moon, which was written by Bo Goldman, aren’t taken from the movies, or from books, either. They’re torn—bleeding—from inside Bo Goldman and the two stars,” wrote Pauline Kael in her effusive review for The New Yorker.
Betrayal (1983)
Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection