Almost There: Joan Allen in "The Upside of Anger"
Monday, August 17, 2020 at 9:46PM 
Just as we did last week, today's Almost There was chosen by you, the reader. From a group of 2005 Oscar hopefuls, Joan Allen came out victorious for her work in The Upside of Anger. She got 25% of your votes, beating performances like Zhang Ziyi's watery Sayuri in Memoirs of a Geisha, Maria Bello's steamy turn in A History of Violence, and Scarlett Johansson's arresting Oscar bid in Match Point. All those actresses got closer to the gold than Allen realistically did, but she was still part of the conversation. After all, it's difficult to believe someone could watch The Upside of Anger and not want to shower its leading lady with accolades…
As beginnings go, The Upside of Anger doesn't have a very auspicious one. We open on the day of a funeral, the camera focusing on a WASP-y matriarch's stony expression as her younger daughter narrates over the action. The young girl speaks of all-consuming anger that took hold of her mother, a transformative force that soured what was, according to the kid, the sweetest person anyone who knew her had ever met. It's all a bit clichéd and maudlin too, an impression that doesn't fade as the narrative folds on itself and flashes back to three years before the burial. In that less mournful time, we meet the family again, all of them playing roles that one wouldn't be surprised to find on a puerile sitcom.
There're four vaguely undistinguishable daughters. One has professional aspirations, another wants to dance, while the oldest seems destined to domesticity after graduation. Our narrator is there too, a sullen teenager with an artistic streak and a wardrobe that couldn't be more mid-2000s if it tried. At the head of the clan, we find that matriarch again. Instead of grief-stricken blacks, she's wearing soft pastels, silk, and lace, a vision of suburbanite living lounging with a hard face and a glass in hand. Is this the woman whose sweetness was so dearly extolled by her kid? Hopelessly sozzled and furious, she sounds and looks more like the cartoon of a desperately unhappy housewife. It's enough to make one doubt Joan Allen's taste.
However, one should never doubt Joan Allen.
As the scene unfolds, we discover that the pater familias of the Wolfmeyer clan has disappeared. According to Terry, his raging wife, the husband absconded to Sweden with his secretary, abandoning his family without even a goodbye. As she tells this to her onscreen daughters, Allen enjoys lacing each word with venom, savoring the cruelty spewing from her mouth as if it was ambrosia from the Gods. It's a showy spectacle, broad and bold, but, the longer the moment stretches, the more we start to see hidden depths beneath the surface. No matter how combative Terry is, she's hurt, her soul bruised and her heart broken. Even as she bombards us with the character's aggressive stance, Allen lets us see the pain fueling the attack.
All that, and she's funny. With her ramrod straight posture and dramatic presence, Allen often sticks out like a sore thumb in every composition, drawing all the attention to herself while unbalancing the other actor's dynamics. As good as the actresses playing her daughters are, they often stand paralyzed in the presence of Allen. Maybe they're intimidated by her talent or perchance trying to show how this family is unprepared to deal with a mother who's decided to give up on life and drown her sorrows in equal parts booze and resentment. These contrasts create an overwhelming sense of awkwardness that's funny to see and the hilarity only increases when Allen starts firing perfectly timed one-liners like a diva of Old Hollywood.
Her anger's funny too, while also being varied. When dealing with her new paramour, a former baseball star played by Kevin Costner, she's amusingly abrasive, mixing her prickliness with a bit of flirtation. She can also be manic, showing the nervousness of a middle-aged woman tentatively reentering romantic life. However, when her daughters' happiness is on the line, any insecurity vanishes and her rage becomes the hostility of a proud lioness. The movie's most memorable and best joke makes full use of this carnivorous bloodthirst, by putting us inside Terry's head. While dining in the company of one of her daughter's boss/boyfriend, she imagines the man's head exploding. As his gooey remains paint everything, we see a rare, genuine, smile adorning her lips. Weirdly enough, in such scenes, it's easy to see the doting mother that existed before unexpected pains marred the picture.
The Upside of Anger is structured in a very fragmented manner, full of time jumps that make it difficult to track the characters' arcs. Because of that, it's doubly important that Allen dominate her modulating tones with discipline. Faced with such a task, the actress accomplishes it with seemingly no effort. She blithely floats through the narrative in a storm of emotions that are so strong they must stay partially hidden or else we might be singed. All of it feels natural, lived-in, organic eccentricity rather than the forced pantomime of a showboating performer. Even when the comedy tips over to melodrama, Allen's in control of everything, showing us the unraveling of Terry with as much piercing precision as her comedy. When a woman fueled by hatred sees herself robbed of even that, Allen plays it like a balloon losing its air, crying in gasps. It's mesmerizing.
Joan Allen turns pain into hilarity and makes comedy hurt, she's sexy like never before and über-charismatic to boot. Her performance as Terry Wolfmeyer is one of her crowning achievements and it's hard to see why it didn't make a bigger dent on the awards race. After all, Allen was at the top of her game, having just earned new fans thanks to the commercial triumph of The Bourne Supremacy, and her reviews were hardly ever better. Still, the most she got was a Critics Choice Award and a handful of regional prizes.
I'd rank her above every single one of that year's Oscar nominees – Judi Dench in Mrs. Henderson Presents, Charlize Theron in North Country, Felicity Huffman in Transamerica, Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice, and the winning work of Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line. In the end, while I believe she was in the Academy's top 10, it's unlikely she was the runner-up, no matter how deserving she was.
The Upside of Anger is available to rent from Amazon, Google Play, Youtube, and others.
Reader Comments (29)
I really did like Joan Allen in the film as she is great in it but the ending. When it was revealed what really happened to Allen's husband in the film. That was one of those "are you fucking shitting me with that?" That killed the film for me.
I will never forget the tragedy of her snub that year. It was still in our early years of Oscar-watching and we didn't quite believe or weren't ready to believe that campaigning was necessary. I remember Kris Tapley had recently moved to Los Angeles and he was telling me. She has no shot. She hasn't gone to anything. Indicating that there was just no effort to get nominated.
It's a sad thing to realize but sometimes even when you make a big effort it doesn't pay off. Still, it's a pity that this performance WHICH SHOULD HAVE HANDILY WON THE OSCAR wasn't among their "top five"
I'm glad you remarked on how sexy she is here cuz damn. Didn't know she had this in her.
You could put this performance in the dictionary under "type of performances the Academy just doesn't get." Too unconventional for a female protagonist, especially after the fairly conventional plot set-up.
She would have been nominated in the 70s.
This is the snub that brought me to The Film Experience. I was so baffled by it that I had to research what the hell went wrong. Then I learned "campaigning" was a thing (eyeroll). Whatever, great performances like this one are their own reward
Great performance, but the film didn’t do her any favours. I remember it being quite bad.
It's been ages since I've seen this movie - at the time, I remember feeling Allen was pretty good, but the movie itself was just "meh".
This is one of those years where the Best Actress race was completely filled by nominees whose films premiered in the fall/winter. The Academy definitely had a blind spot this year for any performance that came out earlier in the year.
Claudio, great write-up as always! I agree that Allen was better than any of the nominated actresses that year and should have handily won. That Best Actress line-up was the single weakest in my lifetime, in my opinion.
Sure, she was great, but I agree with thevoid99 - the ending ruined the film and even Allen could not help.
The Upside of Joan Allen missing a nomination: We get this great Cláudio piece!
She is easily my winner that year,no one gets even close.
I didn't know that she didn't campaign,sometimes the Mo'nique way doesn't work out.
She would've been such a better nominee that the entirety of the actress lineup. I've recently rewatched the film and it really is a truly great performance. It may me nostalgic for the days when Joan Allen was in everything because she is such a great talent. This film sort of of being the end of her stretch which started in 95 makes sense since it's a sort of crowning achievement to a career.
My actress lineup in 2005 was/is:
Joan Allen, The Upside of Anger
Embeth Davidtz, Junebug
Q'orianka Kilcher, The New World
Laura Linney, The Squid and the Whale
Zhang Ziyi, 2046
I never saw this movie (never got Kevin Costner's appeal) but I did LISTEN to it as my dad watched it and remember going whoah every time Joan Allen spoke. And then I came to TheFilmExperience where Nathaniel was extolling Joan's virtues and went whoah once more. :)
She should've won this in a rout - and Costner, who's never been better, at least deserved a nomination.
I remember being shocked that she didn't make the cut and there was a lot of discussion of her missing at the time.
It's not the strongest of years so it is somewhat of a mystery how she was missed. Great performance.
"This is one of those years where the Best Actress race was completely filled by nominees whose films premiered in the fall/winter. The Academy definitely had a blind spot this year for any performance that came out earlier in the year."
This was the issue with The Upside of Anger. IIRC, the film was a Spring release. (For those of you who are saying it was a mediocre film... that would also describe 3/5 films nominated for Best Actress that year.)
Films like Black Panther, Erin Brockovich, and The Grand Budapest Hotel can survive early releases because they have major campaigns backing them and heavy buzz. But they are rare. A small film released in March or April will not get nominated.
Easily her most spectacular perf. Yep, her snub was painful, even because it seemed Academy loved her. She could easily have filled Dench’s or Theron’s spot...
Why is no overdue narrative building for her? I am beyond curious!
I also thought she was way better than any of the nominees. I miss her! She is so talented, and her career really slowed down after this. I enjoyed her small role in Room, but other than that she hasn't been in a quality film in ages.
She was snubbed for Dench being Dench,my line up looses half of those nominees Huffman,Dench and Knightley who was the surprise nominee that year.,
My Top 5
Allen
Witherspoon
Theron
Danes
Paltrow
Her performance is great. And at a first watching, the movie is fun. However, after thinking the plot there are several holes and issues. I think that didn't help at the time of voting.
she didnt even get a Globe nom... Oscar chances were DOA
This one pissed me off. Immensely. My friend to this day goes "remember that time you got pissed off about Joan Allen missing for The Upside of Anger?" and I'm mad all over again. For Costner too.
If I remember correctly Allen wanted the performance to speak for itself and refused to campaign...respectable but it does hurt that she got so little attention for it and seemed to fall off the face of the earth until Room. I have Weisz in lead as my winner but she’s definitely in the top five. I felt the screenplay has a good heart and knows what it WANTS to be but Allen’s performance is what elevates it.
It seems the BFCA is a huge fan of Allen, which probably accounts for them (rightfully) nominating her here. She won their BSA award twice (!) for The Crucible and Pleasantville, the latter of which she was not even nominated by AMPAS.
In my opinion, this is the worst Oscar snub of the past 14 years. Joan should have won this year over the Vanilla Ice Cream performance of Reese Witherspoon. I sincerely hope Joan gets another shot at a nomination. She is one of our best and horribly underused.
So glad Joan is getting her due here, if not everywhere she should! Excellent writeup that does her performance justice. It is a tour de force, and really stands out from the roles she's more typically played.
Agree she's been terribly underutilized as of late...has she really not been in anything on the big screen since ROOM? That's...that's practically criminal.
She probably would have won for me that year (although Keira would be battling her, I'd need to rewatch to have a stronger opinion). I would have nominated Costner, too. And it's sad to think how that movie would probably not be made today, or if it were it'd be half as interesting on Netflix.
Both she and Costner would have been in the running had the film been released in the fall instead of the spring. And not having four interchangeable daughters would have helped too with the story. The Academy and whoever "ran" this "campaign" REALLY dropped the ball on this one.