The Upside of Anger's opening scene is Terry Wolfmeyer (Joan Allen) and her daughters attending a funeral in the rain. Without explanation, the movie jumps back three years where we see Wolfmeyer struggling to come to grips with the fact that her husband unexpected disappears. Wolfmeyer is left to raise her daughters Hadley (Alicia Witt), Emily (Keri Russell), Andy (Erika Christensen), and Lavender (Evan Rachel Wood) who is called Popeye and is the narrator of the film. Wolfmeyer used to be a very happy person but is now angry and abusing alcohol to deal with the rejection of her husband running off to Switzerland with his secretary without a word.
We first meet Denny Davies (Kevin Costner) when he comes to Wolfmeyer's door to ask her to sell some of her land for a new subdivision that is planned behind her property. Davies, a former major league baseball player and local radio DJ, has been hired to convince property owners to sell land for the development. Davies is holding a drink when he comes to the door and is slightly drunk, as is Wolfmeyer. Wolfmeyer's alcohol abuse is reinforced when she picks up several bottles of liquor at the grocery store the first time we she her out of her house. She and Davies are rarely seen in the first parts of the film without a drink in their hands.
Wolfmeyer and Davies soon begin a relationship of convenience, initially held together by their drinking. He is a calming influence on her and her family despite his alcohol abuse. Wolfmeyer isn't sure she wants to be in a relationship but soon falls in love with him. Wolfmeyer's life is full of other complications, which mostly involve her daughters. Hadley tells her mother at her college graduation that she is pregnant and getting married. Andy decides she doesn't want to go to college, to her mother's great disappointment, and becomes involved with a much older man who is Davies' producer at the radio station. Emily wants to go to dance while her mother is insistent on her going to college. Emily also becomes very ill for a time. Wolfmeyer's youngest daughter, Popeye, seems to get along with everyone, including Davies. She is exploring a relationship with a boy at school.
Each of the secondary plot lines circle around and feed into Wolfmeyer's inner struggle to come to grips with the disappearance of her husband and to move on with her life. The challenges of her daughter's are resolved throughout the film and Wolfmeyer and Davies fall in love and stop abusing alcohol.
The film takes an unexpected turn when a construction worker steps through an rotting cover on an old water well on land behind Wolfmeyer's house. He finds the remains of Wolfmeyer's husband at the bottom of the well. She and Davies soon realize that he did not leave Wolfmeyer and her girls but fell into the well while walking the property three years earlier and died.
We are then taken full circle back to the funeral where the film began. Wolfmeyer, her daughters and Davies appear very comfortable with their relationships with one another after the funeral. It is apparent that they are all in a good place from which to pursue their life's aspirations.
The film is presented in a non-linear structure by virtue of beginning and ending at the end. The primary conflict, Wolfmeyer's struggle to accept the cards life has dealt her and find new reasons to live, is internal. Almost all of the films participants are characterized through dialog and external action. Wolfmeyer and Davies are also characterized through appearance, primarily through obvious intoxication. Since the film is primarily about Wolfmeyer's inner struggle, she is also characterized through internal action.
The Upside of Anger has several elements of symbolism. One of the first is when Wolfmeyer visit to the grocery store in the first part of the film. She picks up on bottle of alcohol, pauses, then selects another, and then finally grabs several bottles. This scene immediately tells viewers that she has a drinking problem.
Another moment of symbolism is when Wolfmeyer and her daughters are on the back porch staring out into the night, essentially at nothing. This represents that they are not sure where their lives are going. They are in a dark place right now. Also, the dining room in Wolfmeyer's home is often shown with dim light, even when one or more characters are sitting at the table. This symbolizes that they are essentially all alone.
The most consistent element of symbolism is Popeye's computer. It frequently provides insights into how she, or in some cases the family, is feeling. When a boy refuses to kiss Popeye, the film flashes to her computer which is playing a somewhat cartoonish video of a woman beating a man. When she offers him sex and he refuses, the computer is playing a video of a woman screaming. This shows that she is frustrated is wants to scream.
During an extended narration in which Popeye talks about how people don’t know how to love, her computer is playing another representative video. We see couples fighting, a mushroom cloud, an atomic wind, a woman shooting a gun at a man, a boxing match and other images to represent how people hurt each other.
In her final narration, Popeye sums up the movie and reconciles its title by saying “anger, like growth, comes in spurts, and fits – and in its wake leaves a new chance of acceptance and the promise of calm. This is the upside of anger.
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