When I first saw Kramer vs. Kramer, it was extremely painful for me. And that's a good thing. The movie covers its difficult topic about as well as it can be covered. It doesn't offer any easy answers, like so many similar movies. Thus it respects the subject matter and presents hard emotional truths for us to swallow. And that is how a person can develop a wise heart. Ideally, all movies would be working toward promoting the right emotional and intellectual responses in all of us, instead of desensitizing us toward serious human issues and rendering us apathetic and stupid. Kramer vs. Kramer demonstrates how a movie, simply by provoking the right questions and framing issues discerningly, does not have to offer many explicit answers to be extremely meaningful and constructive. And, in a way, doing that is an answer to life's problems. Perhaps one of the most important kinds of answers of all. Marvelous leading performances by Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman and Justin Henry. Great character acting from the rest of the cast. A superb movie in every respect.