One thing that I think is misunderstood about The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is how Rebecca De Mornay’s character is affected by her husband’s suicide and own miscarriage. No, I think someone was wrong with with to begin with.
De Mornay plays the wife of a Seattle-area obstetrician Victor Mott (John de Lancie) who we see early on sexually assaulting pregnant Claire Bartel (Annabella Sciorra) during an examination. Claire makes a report that leads to other women coming forth to also accuse him of sexual misconduct. Victor ends up committing suicide as a criminal investigation begins.
This leads to a meeting between De Mornay’s character referred to as Mrs. Motts and lawyers. She’s told that because of the investigation, her husband’s assets are frozen. Also, because he fatally shot himself, the doctor voided his life insurance payouts. Mrs. Mott sits there coldly in the meeting looking at the lawyers wearing a nice dress. You can tell she probably only married her husband because he was an OB-GYN doctor and had a nice luxurious house that she’s also going to lose.
As she struggles to get up from the office chair, she gives one of the lawyers an ugly look when he offers to help. She’s not upset that her husband is dead. She’s upset that her husband was caught doing bad things to his patients. This isn’t about a woman who is grieving. She’s upset her whole life upends as the miscarriage even prevents her from staying in the house.
It’s one thing to make us sympathize for her character because she might have been unaware of her husband’s behavior and losing a child is difficult on any person. She’s also lost a lifestyle she’s become accustom to. It’s quite possibly a lifestyle she has been fixating on since she was young. And it’s all taken away from her.
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is actually the story of three different women who are a reflection of certain lifestyles. Mrs. Mott is the trophy wife, the one who knows she can marry a doctor, live the extravagant life with a few kids. Claire is the typical housewife whose husband, Michael (Matt McCoy), is a genetic engineer, and they have the two kids in the nice suburbs. And then there’s Claire’s friend, Marlene Craven (Julianne Moore), the successful business woman, who doesn’t have time for husbands or kids.
When this movie was released in the winter of 1992, women like Marlene, who runs a realty business, were still being seen negatively by a lot of people in society. She’s taken business away from a good man and his family, one might say. Yet, the only difference between Marlene and Mrs. Mott is Marlene isn’t willing to eat shit for what she gets. Mrs. Mott ends up working her way into the Bartel household by claiming to be a nanny named “Peyton Flanders.”
Of course, her whole plan works on the luck that the Bartels haven’t already hired a nanny. And you also wonder why the Bartels don’t at least check her references, they would discover they don’t exist. But De Mornay lays on the charm as “Peyton” you can understand why Michael and Claire would see that she looks like someone who wouldn’t harm a fly.
De Mornay has been one of those actresses who can easily switch between playing nice roles and bad roles, tough women and more softer women. Her previous role had been as Kurt Russell’s estranged wife in Backdraft who struggles with the love she has for him despite his reckless firefighting behavior. She loves him too much to lose him. Ever since her star-making role as a call-girl in Risky Business, she showed her range. But too many flops like Feds and The Slugger’s Wife in the 1980s put her career in jeopardy. And she only had supporting roles in critically acclaimed movies like Runaway Train and The Trip to Bountiful.
That’s what makes her performance here so wonderful. It’s a hit-or-miss/all-for-nothing role. You don’t have to like “Peyton” at all. And De Mornay isn’t trying to be likeable. She’s leaving us to wonder just how demented this woman has gotten. It’s one thing to totally disrupt a family unit. It’s another to do your damnedest to become a member so your unsuspecting victims will defend your actions.
“Peyton” sees herself become the mother of Michael and Claire’s baby Joey (Eric Melander, Ashley Melander and Jennifer Melander). When she takes the child for a walk in the park, another woman assumes Joey is her child and compliments her and you can see “Peyton” getting that euphoria. She soon starts to begin to nurse Joey with her own breast milk causing him to not want Claire’s. As crazy as it sounds, “Peyton” wants to be the mother to Joey and Emma (Madeline Zima), Michael and Claire’s daughter.
And after a while, she even wants to be Michael’s wife as he has a respectable job and a nice house. Unfortunately, writer Amanda Silver and director Curtis Hanson never really examine the six month period between Mott’s suicide and Joey’s birth to see what really happened to Mrs. Mott to make her snap. In real life, the news media wouldn’t report Claire’s name unless she formerly press charges against the doctor. But it probably would be likely for her to find out. It’s probably one of those plot details that needs a shortcut for pacing issues.
What separates this movie from Fatal Attraction and Play Misty for Me is how the woman villain operates. Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest and Jessica Walter’s Evelyn Draper were out to destroy the lives of their men when they couldn’t be with them. “Peyton” targets Claire and Marlene. And while in those movies, the other women characters were mostly victims, here they’re more complex. Even Emma heroically keeps Joey from “Peyton” in the climax.
With the exception of Solomon (Ernie Hudson), a man with developmental disabilities who lives and works with a social program as a handyman for the Bartels, many other male characters seem oblivious to “Peyton.” But despite this, I wouldn’t call it totally an anti-man movie even though Marlene is very curt with her young assistant who is a man. J.K. Simmons uses the same curtness with J. Jonah Jameson for humor in the Spider-Man movies.
In many ways, I think the movie is really revolutionary for the time in how it handles these roles. It’s told from the point of view of women. Michael might be oblivious to “Peyton” and her motives but he’s not stupid and rebuffs her advances. This is what keeps it from falling into the realm of an erotic thriller. In real life, a lot of men would me more concerned about the health of their wives than a one-night stand in the same situation.
For what it’s worth, Hanson approached everyone of his thrillers with more intelligence than the standard Lifetime thriller motif. This would be his biggest hit movie grossing $140 million worldwide against a budget about $12 million. It also gave De Mornay a revitalized success in the 1990s even though her film career has faltered as she’s had more success in TV. (Her cameo as Paul Finch’s mother in American Reunion is perfect casting.) Considering The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was released during January 1992, that says a lot. It even knocked Steven Spielberg’s Hook out of the No. 1 spot. But that’s not saying much as Hook didn’t meet box-office expectations.
Disney which had produced the original is planning a remake with Maika Monroe and Mary Elizabeth Winstead reportedly cast with the movie to be released through 20th Century Studios.
What to do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 