Mortal Thoughts (1991)

Mortal Thoughts isn’t an easy film to watch, but it’s a good one, and I have seen it multiple times. It’s a film that rewards repeat viewings because the plot has many twists and turns that become easier to understand and follow. I suppose some would say that viewers shouldn’t need to see a film more than once to follow the plot, but even the simplest films reward repeat viewings. It’s so easy to miss a detail here and there when watching any film. And the main character, Cynthia Kellogg, is the one telling her story, twisting and turning it into something she hopes police detectives will believe.

Mortal Thoughts starts with grainy, black-and-white home movies behind the opening credits. They feature two girls at different ages, sitting and eating on a blanket spread out on a sparse, rocky lawn; wrestling on the floor of a house; playing on the sand of a beach; jumping rope on a sidewalk. The silence of the home movies is a little unnerving; maybe that was the point. But it is also true that sound was not a typical feature of home movies from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

After the opening credits, the film cuts to Cynthia Kellogg moving through a police station in slow motion. She is escorted into an interrogation room by Detective Linda Nealon. The pace of the film becomes normal with a close-up of Cynthia Kellogg. Viewers see her once again in black and white, this time through the view finder of the camera that Detective Nealon sets up to record Kellogg’s interrogation. Detective Nealon’s partner, Detective John Woods, enters the interrogation room, and the questions start. Cynthia Kellogg refuses her right to an attorney because she is innocent, she says: She didn’t kill anyone.

(This article about Mortal Thoughts contains all the spoilers.)

The two protagonists in the film, Cynthia Kellogg, played by Demi Moore, and Joyce Urbanski, played by Glenne Headly, are longtime friends. The home movies depict the start of their friendship in childhood. But how well do these two friends really know one another? The details of their relationship and the murder hinted at by Cynthia when she starts the police interrogation are revealed slowly through her testimony, which is a combination of her speaking directly with the detectives and a series of flashbacks.

The detectives begin the interview by asking about trouble in the Urbanski marriage, and the film starts a series of transitions between the present, Cynthia’s interview with the police detectives, and the past, the events leading up to the death of Jimmy Urbanski as recalled by Cynthia. Cynthia remembers seeing some trouble at the wedding reception. In a flashback, viewers see newlywed Jimmy Urbanski drinking and arguing with his wife over the purse that contains the wedding gifts of money.

The detectives bring Cynthia back to the present and press again: Were there other problems in the marriage? According to Cynthia, Joyce had several complaints: Jimmy comes and goes as he pleases, he is high all the time, he is violent. He once pulled a knife on Joyce. He punched her so hard once that he put her in the hospital. In one flashback, Joyce and Cynthia are working in Joyce’s hair salon, the Clip ’n’ Dye salon in Bayonne, New Jersey. Jimmy’s arrival in the salon means an argument about a missed appointment for an abortion. Jimmy definitely doesn’t want any more children, and he doesn’t care that the employees and customers in the salon can hear their personal conversation. Jimmy shoves Joyce in the back of the salon, hurting her once again. On his way out, he empties the till.

The detectives ask Cynthia about Joyce wanting to retaliate and kill her husband Jimmy. Cynthia says that it was never serious. It was a joke, a running gag. Joyce did try to defend herself by calling the police, but they didn’t “do sh--,” as Cynthia says. (This lack of intervention on the part of the police is entirely believable, especially in 1991, when the film was released. Even after the Me Too movement, women still find themselves subject to doubt and accusations when they are the ones being abused and assaulted.) This detail actually creates some sympathy for Joyce because it demonstrates how trapped she was in her marriage to a lout like Jimmy.

In another flashback, viewers learn that the Urbanskis live above the Clip ’n’ Dye salon. Cookie, one of the salon employees, and Cynthia can hear the Urbanskis arguing in the apartment when they (Cookie and Cynthia) are in the salon. In this particular flashback, Jimmy insists that Joyce buy sugar. She comes into the salon and asks Cookie to do it. When Cookie comes back to the salon with the sugar, Joyce gives her the rest of the day off. Then Joyce mixes the sugar with rat poison in a sugar bowl and takes it upstairs to the apartment. When Joyce returns to the salon, she tells Cynthia what she did, and Cynthia goes upstairs to keep Jimmy from using the sugar laced with poison. Jimmy is rolling a joint and does his best to look down Cynthia’s blouse when she sits at the table. Cynthia eventually spills the sugar and Jimmy’s cup of tea, but this only gives Jimmy a chance to show more of his misogynistic tendencies.

The detectives already know that Jimmy was verbally and physically abusive. Hearing Cynthia describe Jimmy’s behavior is one thing, but seeing his abusive behavior is much more powerful, and the flashbacks show Jimmy to be a very unpleasant sort. Cynthia’s husband Artie cannot understand why Cynthia remains friends with Joyce. Artie doesn’t like the Urbanskis, especially Jimmy. During a conversation with Cynthia, he wonders out loud why a grown man (Jimmy, that is) still hangs around playgrounds. But Joyce and Cynthia are childhood friends with a long history, and Cynthia works for Joyce in her hair salon. It’s not so easy to break off this type of relationship; it’s much easier to make excuses for Jimmy.

Jimmy Urbanski died the night of the fair at the Feast of Saint Rocco, and the detectives’ previous questioning is more like collecting background information about the events leading up to this night. The night of the feast, Cynthia and Joyce are looking forward to a night out alone, but Jimmy decides to join them and piles into the Clip ’n’ Dye work van at the last minute. It isn’t long before he tries to touch Cynthia from the back of the van (she is sitting in the front passenger seat). Joyce, who is driving, swerves, crosses the yellow line, and heads for a truck to get him to stop. Joyce swerves out of the way at the last minute, but the night is off to a dangerous and desperate start. Cynthia tells the detectives that she was playing roulette at the fair when Joyce and Jimmy got into a physical fight. Joyce arrived at the gambling table to say that they had to leave because Jimmy tried to choke her, and Joyce cut his throat in self-defense.

The detectives are skeptical about Cynthia’s story. Detective John Woods is the one to express doubts: “I don’t know. Some things— I don’t know. [pause] Did you think you would get away with this?” He’s playing the part of bad cop; he is the one who starts to badger Cynthia as the interrogation continues. Cynthia eventually leaves the police station in a huff, and Detective Woods allows it, in spite of Detective Nealon’s protests. The detectives have done their homework before talking to Cynthia, and he thinks that Cynthia will be back. And he is right. Cynthia Kellogg doesn’t get any further than the front seat of her car before she returns to the police station.

Did I mention that Mortal Thoughts takes place during the Christmas season? It’s Christmastime in Bayonne, New Jersey, and the brightly colored holiday lights outside the police station bring it all back for Cynthia: They remind her of the lights at the Feast of Saint Rocco. And viewers now see in another flashback that it wasn’t Joyce who was attacked by Jimmy. Jimmy tried to rape Cynthia in the back of the Clip ’n’ Dye van, and Cynthia was the one who slashed his throat with a box cutter in self-defense. Cynthia returns to the police station, and Detective Woods seems to have known all along that she would return and tell the detectives what really happened. In spite of his badgering during the interrogation, he seems quite sympathetic toward Cynthia. He lets her go, trusting that she will return.

Cynthia’s flashback about the attempted rape is a very difficult scene to watch. It seems to go on forever because it puts you in Cynthia’s position, with her trying to get away from Jimmy Urbanski and being trapped, no matter how hard she fights him. If she hadn’t found the box cutter, the scene would have ended very differently. Bruce Willis, who plays Jimmy Urbanski and was Demi Moore’s husband at the time of the film’s shooting, gives a very convincing performance of a man who doesn’t care much about anything and treats his wife, her childhood friend, and everyone else poorly. He exudes menace as easily as he exudes a devilish sense of humor in his action films and on the 1980s television sitcom Moonlighting. He and Demi Moore pull off the attempted rape scene so well that it’s easy to forget they are two famous actors who just happened to be married to one another at the time.

The desperation that the two women feel, even after Jimmy’s throat is slashed and he is no longer a threat, feels very real, too. The frank conversation between Cynthia and Joyce in the front seat of the van underscores how getting Jimmy out of the way doesn’t change too much for them. Joyce guesses—correctly—that Jimmy tried to force himself on Cynthia. She knows that Cynthia had no choice but to defend herself, but she also knows that the two of them are caught in a bind: “What if they don’t believe us, Cynthia? What if Jimmy wakes up? You know he’ll kill us both, you know that! We gotta stick together now. It is too late. We are just gonna have to take him somewhere and leave him.” Cynthia realizes that Joyce is telling the truth about one thing: She and Joyce are trapped no matter what they decide to do.

The film’s title, Mortal Thoughts is taken from a quote in act 1, scene 5 of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, in which Lady Macbeth says: “Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty.” The film’s title may have solid literary roots, but I don’t think it represents either of the two female leads, Cynthia Kellogg and Joyce Urbanski, very precisely. Cynthia acted in self-defense; she is the one who kills Jimmy to prevent him from raping her, but it wasn’t a planned act. I was relieved that she had stopped Jimmy’s attack. It’s hard to have sympathy for Jimmy, even though he ends up dead and tossed in a ditch, and I imagine Joyce would feel some relief at being free of her tormenter, too.

I should mention Harvey Keitel, who plays Detective John Woods. It’s a supporting role, but Keitel is great in it. He is tough as nails, but he softens a bit when he knows that Cynthia Kellogg’s resolve is crumbling. He has faith that she will return to the police station on her own and reveal what really happened the night of Feast of Saint Rocco. Detective Woods’s sympathy for Cynthia reminded me a little of his character Detective Hal Slocumb in Thelma & Louise, which was released in May 1991, just one month after Mortal Thoughts.

Mortal Thoughts is one of those films that rewards multiple viewings because many of the actors’ performances are nuanced, and for most of the film, many of the characters—and viewers, too—aren’t sure who to trust. The first time that I saw it, I remember being surprised more than once by the plot, and that’s always a good sign.

The home movies that rolled behind the opening credits are repeated behind the closing credits in very slow motion. Cynthia Kellogg and Joyce Urbanski started their lives and their friendship in innocence, but their lives certainly didn’t end that way. I still had a lot of sympathy for both of them. They were caught in desperate circumstances, so desperate that their marriages and their friendship couldn’t last under the strain. All of the actors give such good performances that you can almost believe they all grew up together in Bayonne, in spite of their false-sounding New Jersey accents!

April 19, 1991, release date  •  Directed by Alan Rudolph  •  Screenplay by William Reilly, Claude Kerven  •  Music by Mark Isham  •  Edited by Tam Walls  •  Cinematography by Elliot Davis

Demi Moore as Cynthia Kellogg  •  Glenne Headly as Joyce Urbanski  •  Bruce Willis as James (aka Jimmy) Urbanski  •  Harvey Keitel as Detective John Woods  •  John Pankow as Arthur (aka Artie) Kellogg  •  Billie Neal as Detective Linda Nealon  •  Frank Vincent as Dominic, Joyce’s father  •  Doris McCarthy as Jeanette, Joyce’s mother  •  Karen Shallo as Gloria, James’s mother  •  Doris McCarthy, as Pat, Cynthia’s mother  •  John Descano as Cynthia’s father  •  Kelly Cinnante as Cookie

Distributed by Columbia Pictures  •  Produced by New Vision Pictures, Polar Entertainment Corporation, Rufglen Films