Reason and Peace

If the cultural background of the film is changed to China, Ted is undoubtedly a good husband and father. As the lawyers questioned Ted, we got more answers. Is there anything Joanna can't be satisfied with? This is an ideal family for almost thousands of Chinese women, with competent husbands and obedient sons. Her departure puzzled us. It seems understandable if she chose to leave because the monotonous and suffocating life made her miserable, but it also makes us feel disgusted with Joanna from the bottom of my heart. The director seems to have no intention of it. De's apology and Joanna's return at the end of the play, the director tried his best to balance the audience's impression of the two. Well, that's not the point.
Carefully pondering the details of the film, we can see that Joanna is a very capable and talented designer, not necessarily worse than her husband. His unhappiness is probably more due to his marriage and resignation. Living conditions. She is dissatisfied with this family division of labor. Why can only she run the house to do some unwilling and complicated things that do not reflect Joanna's own value? She's a feminist, as her friends can tell.
Running away has become an inevitable choice that ordinary people cannot understand. Yes, you will find that this is very similar to Nora in "A Doll's House". Fortunately, Joanna was not in Ibsen's era, and she could support herself. The film was shot in the late 1970s and early 1980s. What was the state of America at that time? Vietnam War, anti-war, Kennedy assassination, peace, equal rights, Martin Luther King, feminist... From these keywords, we can find clues, a pursuit of equal status and value with men. He doesn't need her husband to be so good, he can't share the joy of his success, because that's the right he's handed over, he could have succeeded. It was the shackles of the family that held her on the side of reality. She wants to break the shackles, "family responsibilities" and "children" cannot lock a free heart. As she hoped, in New York, she found herself, and the inner suffering that followed, she became rational, peaceful, and the return of motherhood.
The last thing we want to see, but cannot see, is the fact that the Kramers have to face. Emotional issues have to be judged by cold laws. I also don't want to speculate on the complicated feelings of the couple when they face each other, Joanna's tearful eyes, Ted's forbearance deep eyes, we can imagine that this is destined to be a constant zero-sum game, no one will really win, no matter who wins this lawsuit It's unfair to the other party.
You might have the same thought as Lawyer Ted: Why not let Billy Jr. choose? This is undoubtedly cruel. How can we allow a seven-year-old child to make a decision that is doomed to hurt? Even if it can, how can a judge believe that the child is not "taken care of"? Ted is right.
This unexpected ending makes people feel that the ending is too hasty, maybe this is the "O'Henry-style ending" that the director wanted.

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