The Upside of Anger....Anger in its Deepest Manifestations

Anger…Why do I get angry?.....Am I that much hurt?.....Am I aware of all the facts that drive me angry?....Am I justified for inflecting my anger on others?.....Am I forcing others to support me?....Am I striving on my loved ones’ support?....Am I inflecting my anger on them?....Am I poisoning their lives?....Am I changing to a shrew?....Am I giving up my wisdom and caring nature for anger?....Do I deserve a slap to wake me up from my anger?....OR Is it ok to release my anger so that I can calm down?

The Story
 
The movie “Upside of Anger” revolves around all these questions. It is the story of Terry Wolfmeyer; a housewife with four daughters. She is consumed with anger over her husband who mysteriously abandoned his family. Terry believes he left to Sweden with his young Swedish secretary. Terry’s solution to her heartbreak is in absolute anger and burying all her sorrows and self-pity in her glass of vodka.

She has problem with each of her daughters: “Four girls? One that hates me, two or three that are leaning that way.” Hadely is the eldest. She is a fresh college graduate who decided to marry her boyfriend with whom she was involved for three years without her mother’s slightest knowledge. Andy refuses to go to college and instead she is seeking a job as a reporter against her mother’s will. Emily is the dreamer who wants to be a ballet dancer and applying for the college of arts. In her mothers’ opinion this is no serious education. The youngest is Popeye, a 15 year old, who was never taken seriously either by her mum or sisters “You are child..What do you know”. However, she is the most mature of them all and she holds the moral of the movie.

Terry has a neighbor; Denny the former baseball player. Just like Terry he is desperate. He used to admire her. He is a sport Shaw presenter who doesn’t want to talk baseball. When her husband deserted her, Denny came to her support. He started as just a drinking partner then he developed real feelings and care for Terry and her daughters

My life is falling apart…I expect some compassion from you

In seeking her daughters’ support, Terry gives them no choice. She angrily demands their consideration and compassion. While her daughters were preparing dinner for her, she said furiously “My life is falling apart…I expect some compassion from you”

She doesn’t even give them the choice whether to hate their father or to look for explanation from his side. She decided not to call him or let them do. She even unconsciously obliges her daughters to hate him to show her consideration and support. She once told them in despair:

Terry: I’m a wreck.

Emily: I hate his guts. I hate his guts for what he he’s done.

Terry: Oh. He is a pig, your dad. Just a vile, selfish, horrible pig, but you know what? I’m not gonna to trash him to his girls.

Andy and Emily hug their mother.

Andy: I hate him too.

Emily: I hate him so much.

Terry: I know you do, baby. You’re human. How could you not? When your eyes were open wide.

Actually she doesn’t know anything. The daughters have confused feelings towards their father. They need explanations. They want to call him to know what happened but they can’t so as not to hurt Terry. They don’t hate him but they say they do for her. Emily once wrote him a letter and was afraid it might be mean. In a moment of truth, she even told her mother when she was ill; she needs her father to know saying “I don’t hate him, I know that you do, I just thought of it and I think that I don’t”. For this, the girls started to be angry with their mother. Popeye comments on her mother’s state saying:

“My mother was always the nicest person I ever knew. She was the nicest, sweetest woman than anyone who knew her ever knew. Then things changed...then she changed. She got angry. Good and angry.  Anger has turned my mother into a very sad and bitter woman. If she wasn't my mother, I'd slap her. I would. I'd look her straight in the face and tell her what I really think of her...and then I'd run really fast in the opposite direction.”

I hate the way I come off to my girls. I just hate that I can’t control my emotions

With agony, pain, and anger, Terry deals with her daughters’ problems. She is losing her wisdom and farsightedness.  Being angry with Hadely for keeping her love relation from her, Terry embarrassed her before her mother and father-in-laws and her fiance:

Terry: She was so loved from the minute she was born. Just an adorable little thing. She was...well, she grew up too fast didn't she?  She grew up so fast and had a mouth on her.

Hadely: Mother!

Terry:  When she was in her teens she was her own little boss.

Hadely: Mother!

Terry: And she would sometimes just not come home

Hadely: All right, could we just toast, please? Thank you.

Commenting on this situation, Terry told Denny “I hate the way I come off to my girls. I just hate that I can’t control my emotions”.

With Emily, she gave her dream the cold shoulder. She criticized her for joining the College of Arts instead of being proud of her.

Emily: Be proud! Shit! You know? I'm focused! What is your problem? The only thing you're focused on is drinking and Denny! Be glad that I have a dream!

The irony is that Terry doesn’t find the College of Arts a serious one, while she herself wanted to be a poet. However, her parents pushed her to marry and abandon her dream. She is obsessed by anger and controlling her daughters’ future, rather than thinking clearly. She can’t find a wiser way to dissuade her daughters or give them good pieces of advice. Rather, she puts them in embarrassing situations or causes them depression by killing their own dreams. Terry just couldn’t control her feelings of resenting Emily’s dream to the extent that started to undermine her daughter’s self-esteem.

Emily: I wish you would take me seriously.

Terry: Honey, I take you seriously. I just don't think you have much capacity for self-evaluation.

Emily: You know, you'd think you'd be happy for me...considering the way your life turned out. The way your parents pushed you...

Terry: To marry your father? Yeah. I'm not complaining. They pushed me to take life seriously...not to live in the clouds.

Emily: Do you have any idea what an idiot you sound like sometimes?

Terry: I love how you worry that the letter you sent to the parent who deserted you is too mean, and yet, to the one who's here in the fight, you have no problem saying the most vile things. Isn't that a tad odd?

It is obvious that Terry’s obsession with “serious” college education for all her girls lies in her wish to prove to herself before anybody else that she can make her daughters better off without the father who deserted them.

You just don’t seem to care all that much about me, unless, like now, I’m sick

For this anger to calm down, Terry got three slaps ranging from in strength from the weakest to the strongest. The first slap came when Emily got sick with stomach ache and was admitted to hospital. At first the doctors thought it might be stomach cancer. They ran necessary test and it was discovered that her pains are caused by physiological stress. Terry was devastated over this.

Emily: I’m not stressed

Terry: Yes, you are. You are mad at me. Mad at your Daddy. I can see that all the time. You’ve got a cloud over your head….You need to get better, Emily. I can take a lot, but I couldn’t take losing you.

Emily smiles

Terry: Why is that funny?

Emily: Because you just don’t seem to care all that much about me, unless, like now, I’m sick.

Terry: That’s not true. That’s just not true. I adore you.

Emily: I don’t see that.

Terry: Well, what can I say? You are like everyone else in my life you need to pay closer attention to me.

Terry is highly consumed by her anger and indulgence in self-pity that she can’t show care and love for her daughters in their everyday life. She is getting estranged from them and that’s the first realization she gets from the first slap.

I am so sick of being your bitch

The second slap was when Denny left Terry. Denny is such a loveable person. He loves Terry and her daughters. He believed in Adeny’s talents and helped her find her dream job. He cared for Emily and tried to give her emotional support in her dancing dream. He acted as father with Popeye; accompanying her in a trip with her boyfriend and his father. Denny found in this relationship his new life. In his Shaw he doesn’t want to talk about the past “baseball”. He is looking forward for the future in Terry’s “family”.
Denny: When I'm with you, Terry...with your girls...I feel like there's a big chunk of my life still left to be played out. And that's what I want to talk about, not... baseball.

And above all this he was extremely tolerant with Terry’s anger fits and humiliating actions. She used to kick him every now and then out of her home. Popeye one day asked Denny if he would marry her mother. When Denny brought up Popeye’s question to Terry, she called this a “Cheap Shot” saying:

Terry: I have had enough problems right now, Denny. I don’t need you using my daughter as a pawn..I don’t want to get into something silly…like a cute talk about a marriage…that we both know would be doomed from the start….I don’t want to hear what Popeye said, no

Terry slammed the bathroom door after her

Getting extremely angry and fed up with Terry’s humiliations, Denny broke the bathroom door and shouted at Terry very furiously that she got really scared saying:

Denny: I am so sick of being your bitch. I put up with your shit, because I know how much pain you're in. But it's enough! It's a tall order for a patient lover, and I am the farthest thing from that that you're ever gonna lay eyes on.

Denny faced Terry’s anger with an outrage. He has had it with her shrewdness and can’t take it anymore. Following this situation, Terry started to realize how mean she was to Denny...How supportive he was...How much he cares for her without any kind of obligation...How much she really needs him. She called him many times to apologize but he either hang up or didn’t answer at all. Meanwhile, she started to control her anger and calm down. She decided to quit drinking. She even became nicer with Hadely and Emily. Andy was always her own head. She was never affected by her mother’s refusal for her way of life or even argue about it.

Later when Denny calmed down he came back to Terry. The first thing they did with the girls was to attend a ballet Shaw. While watching the Shaw, Terry imagined Emily dancing in it. She looked at her daughter who was sitting beside Denny and smiled to her nodding in acceptance for her daughter’s dancing dream.

Before coming to the last and strongest slap of all, we see Popeye commenting on how people love “People don't know how to love. They bite rather than kiss, and they slap rather than stroke. Maybe it's because they realize how easy it is for love to go bad, to become suddenly impossible...unworkable, an exercise in futility. So they avoid it and seek solace in angst and fear and aggression, which are always there and readily available. Or maybe sometimes...they just don't have all the facts.”

The only upside to anger, then...is the person you become

The last slap was a hitting fact that hit Terry, her family, and the audience. While working on the farm at the backyard of Terry’s house, a worker stumbled into an old water well. He found a dead body in the well and called Denny. They found a jacket and a wallet for Terry’s long lost husband. He didn’t desert her or the girls; he just fell into the well and died. He remained there for Three years. Terry couldn’t believe it until she saw it herself. All her life-poisoning anger, resentment, agony, despair, shrewdness were simply unjustified.

At the funeral, we see Terry reminiscing about her girls through their childhood till they grew up. She started to accept the fact that they are grown-ups and to realize the hurt she caused them with her unjustified anger. She takes them in an embrace as if she is apologizing and giving them the love and care they needed the most. At the end of the movie, we see airs of acceptance and love between the girls, Terry, and Denny.

Popeye ends the story saying “Anger and resentment can stop you in your tracks. That's what I know now. It needs nothing to burn but the air and the life that it swallows and smothers. It's real, though the fury, even when it isn't. It can change you... turn you...mold you and shape you into someone you're not. The only upside to anger, then...is the person you become... Good job....hopefully someone that wakes up one day and realizes they're not afraid of its journey, someone that knows that the truth is, at best, a partially told story. That anger, like growth, comes in spurts and fits and in its wake, leaves a new chance at acceptance and the promise of calm. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.”