Why Posto scores over Kramer vs Kramer?

(Spoilers Ahead)

I can imagine the debate that would have raged around Kramer Vs Kramer when it released in 1979.The movie dared to question the centuries old family structure where gender roles were sacred and words like single parenting and divorce were still frowned upon. I watched the movie last week on Netflix. For those who don’t know or don’t remember, the story is set around a small family of three in the New York of the late 1970s. Dustin Hoffman plays an ambitious Advertising fellow who, for the better part of his marriage to Meryl Streep, neglects her and their child. His wife slowly stagnates mentally as she tries to fit into the mould of a stereotypical housewife of the 1970s.One day she packs her bags and leaves overnight without her son Billy. 18 months fly by and Dustin Hoffman eventually learns to love and live with Billy, all this while he makes choices that put his son before his career, something that he would have never done when he was married to his wife. Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman get into a courtroom custody battle over their little son . The courtroom scenes are shot beautifully. They play out how marriages were perceived (and still are) in the old days where the man was a provider, the woman a homemaker. There was no concept of love, companionship or compatibility in a marriage. There was no direction for a woman to evolve as a person and a professional. There was no concept of ‘Me Time’.

In the movie, Streep, like her husband, had been into advertising. However, after marriage when she tries to discuss her career options with Hoffman, she is rudely told that her salary wouldn’t even cover the baby’s nanny’s expenses. However, as the case goes to court, Meryl is found making more money than her husband as a sportswear designer. The stiff gender roles come handy when Hoffman’s lawyer harasses streep as she takes the stand.

Lawyer : Now Mrs. Kramer, you say you were married for 8 years. Is that correct?
Meryl : Yes

Lawyer : In all that time, did your husband ever strike you or physically abuse you in anyway.

Meryl : No

Lawyer : Did he, uh, ever strike or physically abuse his child in any way?

Meryl : No

Lawyer : Would you describe your husband as an alcoholic?

Meryl : No

Lawyer : A heavy Drinker?

Meryl : No

Lawyer : Was he unfaithful?

Meryl : No

Lawyer : Uh, did he ever fail to provide for you in anyway?

Meryl : No

Lawyer : I can certainly see why you left him. How long do you plan to live in New York, Mrs. Kramer?

Meryl : Uh, permanently.

Lawyer : How many, uh, boyfriends have you had, uh, permanently?

Meryl : Uh, I don’t recall.

Lawyer : Well, more than 3 less than 33, permanently?

Meryl : Somewhere in between.

Lawyer : Do you have a lover now?

Meryl : Yes, I am seeing someone now.

Lawyer : Is that, uh, permanent?

Meryl : Well, I don’t know.

Lawyer : We don’t really know do we when you say permanently, if you plan to live in New York or even keep your child, for that matter, since you have never done anything in your life that was continuing, stable or regarded as permanent.

Lawyer: What was the longest personal relationship in your life, uh, outside of your parents and girlfriends?

Meryl : I suppose that would be with my child

Lawyer : Whom you have seen twice in a year? Mrs. Kramer, your ex-husband, wasn’t he the longest personal relationship in your life?

Meryl : Nods

Lawyer : Would you speak up Mrs. Kramer? I couldn’t hear you.

Meryl : Yes

Lawyer : How long was that?

Meryl : We were married a year before the baby and then 7 years after that.

Lawyer : So you were a failure at the one most important relationship in your life.

Meryl : I was not a failure

Lawyer : Oh. What do you call it, then, a success? The marriage ended in divorce.

Meryl : I consider it less my failure than his.

Lawyer : Congratulations, Mrs. Kramer. You have just rewritten matrimonial law. You were both divorced.

Lawyer : I would like to ask what this model of stability and respectability has ever succeeded at. Were you a failure at the one most important personal relationship in your life?

Meryl : It did not succeed.

Lawyer : Not it, Mrs. Kramer, you.

Lawyer : Were you a failure at the one most important relationship in your life? Were you?

Meryl : Yeah..

Mothers almost always win the custody battle and so does Meryl Streep. Hoffman has the option to appeal the verdict but that would have meant putting his little kid on the stand so he desists. In the last scene, Meryl comes to pick up her son from her old apartment which she had once called home with Hoffman. However, she has a change of heart and insists that her son now has a home with his father.

I did not find anything fundamentally wrong with the ending. Strictly speaking, the climax could have gone in favour of either of the two parents. But the climax is sudden and leaves you puzzled. There was no buildup to the last scene. How did Meryl decide that it is her husband who should raise their child? Surely it couldn’t have been because her husband had been taking care of their son for 18 months, because she had played that role for 5 and a half years. This rushed ending marred what could have been a perfect movie experience.

In this part of the world in India, 2017 saw a Bengali movie playout a custody battle.

Only this time, it was a fight between a father and a grandfather over their grandson Posto who is also the namesake for the movie. Since his birth, Posto has been brought up by his grandparents, in the leafy bylanes of Shantiniketan. His parents were young and unsettled when he was born so the grandparents take over the mantle to raise their only grandchild. However, 7 years on, the father wants to go the UK with his wife and son for better work opportunities and that’s where the swords are drawn. The grandfather feels that his son is a careless parent and the feeling is compounded when he realizes that the apple of his eye might move thousands of miles away. Unlike Kramer Versus Kramer, the child does find himself on the stand. As Posto cries on the witness stand, his grandfather’s resolve breaks and he withdraws the case. The grandchild’s well-being is far more important to the grandfather than his love for the child. Cut to the next scene, the young family is at the airport, ready to leave for the UK when Posto pulls a disappearing act. Posto’s parents realize that their child is not yet ready to be ‘uprooted’ from a life he has always known. This was a defining moment for Posto’s father to have a change of heart. He brings Posto back to Shantiniketan to the sanctuary of a home that he had always known. The grandparents promise that they would soon move to the UK so that they could all live together as one big family.

When I saw Posto for the first time in 2017, the last courtoom scene sealed my verdict on who should get the custody — For me, it was the grandparents who would rather lose the case than put their grandchild through such trauma. These pivotal scenes also help the audience to form an opinion about who should win the custody. When I think of Kramer Versus Kramer, I feel that the movie needed this kind of buildup. Perhaps, the director should have put Billy on the stand only to have his father withdraw the appeal to save his son from the trauma. This would have led Meryl Streep to believe that her husband would make a great parent if not a better parent than her.

As I watched Posto again last week on Hotstar, it dawned on me that parents are not perfect. Parenting does not come naturally to you but you learn to care for your child as they grow up. They grow, you grow.You make mistakes along the way but that’s okay. In the movie, prior to the courtroom battle, Posto’s father takes him to a get-together in Shantiniketan. He leaves the kid alone in a room with somewhat older kids and doesn’t check on him for hours. The older kids beat up Posto till he bleeds. A more responsible or lets say a seasoned parent would have made trips to the kids room to ensure that the kids were playing fairly but the father had never really got around to parent his son to know that children can get rough when left on their own. During the course of the court case, Posto’s father and mother bring him to Kolkata for a few days. The young couple are invited at a social do where Posto is quickly directed to the kids room. As minutes pass, Posto’s father breaks into a sweat wondering how his son was faring in the kids room. He decides to bring the child home and makes an effort to engage and play with his kid. I think it’s a moment of reckoning for the parents as they realise that they were not just two carefree adults anymore who could waltz in and out of parties but a couple with a child who had to set time aside to become a bunch of 6 year olds with their 6 year old.

Both movies are classics. However, only one of two concludes with a finnese.