Months of Meryl: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

Hi, we’re John and Matt and, icymi, we are watching every single live-action film starring Streep. Previously Julia, The Deer Hunter, Manhattan and The Seduction of Joe Tynan

 #5 — Joanna Kramer, a mother and divorcée embroiled in a messy custody battle.

It’s 1980. Kramer vs. Kramer is a critical and commercial smash (the top-grossing film released in 1979). The dawn of a new era approaches and one actress is anointed as its icon...

“The face is beautiful but anguished, haunted by sorrow, despair, determination and love. Can one face express all these warring emotions, with a grave dignity that adds a deeper beauty to the physical structure? Meryl's face can and does in the extraordinary first image of "Kramer vs. Kramer". This first shot of a superbly crafted film prints indelibly upon the eyes and consciousness of the audience the face of a young actress who, at 30, may become the strongest performer of her generation, first American woman since Jane Fonda to rival the power, versatility and impact of such male stars as Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino...

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Months of Meryl: The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979)

Hi, we’re John and Matt and, icymi, we are watching every single live-action film starring Streep.

#4 — Karen Traynor, a Southern political operative who has an affair with a popular senator.

JOHN: I can’t even imagine what it must have felt like to be an actressexual in 1979, the year when Meryl Streep catapulted herself from that interesting, up-and-coming actress of The Deer Hunter, the Holocaust miniseries (which brought her first Emmy win), and the New York theater scene, to first-class movie star, appearing in three successful films and winning her first Oscar for the year’s highest-grosser and Best Picture champ, Kramer vs. Kramer. But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves; buried in the middle of all this impressive acclaim is perhaps Streep’s least-known triumph of her early period: Jerry Schatzberg’s The Seduction of Joe Tynan.

This story of a liberal senator (Alan Alda, who also penned the script) struggling to balance political ambitions with family life, is a keen, sophisticated relic from a time when studio movies were risky, inspired, and targeted towards an adult audience, free of gimmicks or condescension. They were capable of making bank to boot.

In Joe Tynan, Streep plays Karen Traynor, a Louisiana lawyer who, while aiding Tynan’s campaign against a racist Supreme Court nominee (Remember when racism disqualified you from office?), begins a fling with Alda’s fast-rising political star...

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Months of Meryl: The Deer Hunter (1978)

Hi, we’re John and Matt and, in case you missed it, we are watching every single feature film starring Meryl Streep.

#2 — Linda, a working-class girl waiting for the return of her fiancé (and her fiancé’s pal) from Vietnam.

JOHN: The Deer Hunter is a mammoth film, both an epic tale of a soldier’s journey to hell and back (and back again), and an intimate communal study. Meryl Streep is Linda, engaged to Nick (Christopher Walken) but in love with his best friend Michael (Robert De Niro). Streep is given an underwritten part and asked to stand-in for ideas about femininity — and often simply femininity itself — in a picture dripping with testosterone. The film carefully takes stock of its male relationships, tracing masculine bravado from the Pennsylvania mines to the roulette dens of Vietnam, both critical of masculinity and uncommonly poignant in uncovering the deep bonds that exist between men. Linda often provides the film’s only tender balm to such machismo, but Streep transforms her Girl Back Home into an uncommonly rich creation. This is no flimsy Anne Marie. Linda is a supernatural creation of intense sincerity, relaxed yet energetic, guarded yet vulnerable, the film’s emotional core and its anxious heartbeat.

The Deer Hunter contains your favorite Meryl Moment, Matthew, right?... 

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Months of Meryl: A gossipy debut in Julia (1977)

Presenting a new weekly series that we know you'll love since Meryl always perks you up. This one is modelled after Anne-Marie's "A Year with Kate" series (Anne-Marie will be back soon with a new series) so it's extra delicious that Meryl's first movie character was named Anne Marie! And now I turn you over to John and Matt. -Nathaniel R

Hi, we’re John and Matt and we are watching every single feature film starring Meryl Streep.

Meryl Streep is the Greatest Actress of All Time. Even those who have never seen a single performance of hers know this woman as, perpetually, the Best Actress. Her career is staggering. Her talent limitless. Her influence infinite. We don’t need to sell these claims, especially here. Dissenters there may be, but the choir roars. We kneel at her altar.

Meryl has acted in 52 feature films. If ever there was ever a body of work that deserves a thorough and complete look, we can think of few others than Meryl Streep’s filmography. Thus, Months of Meryl!

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72 days until Oscar nominations. Let's talk '72

What's your favorite movie of 1972? My top ten goes like so...

01 Cabaret (Bob Fosse)
Come to the cabaret 🎵

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