The pilot episode of FX’s Justified closes with Marshall Raylan Givens, without invitation, visiting his ex-wife at dawn. From the jump, Raylan’s life has been a bombardment of aggressively violent confrontations. He is violent by choice and, fulfilling the promise of the show’s title, justified in being so. Yet Raylan is unsettled, seeking his ex-wife’s counsel for an honest answer to a musing he had not much considered until that morning.
“I guess I never thought of myself as an angry man,” he says, at which his ex-wife smiles and shakes her head slowly, “Raylan… you’re the angriest man I have ever known.”
Justifiable anger torments Raylan, and it is a quiet torment. The kind easily masked with a handsome face, swagger, and seemingly effortless charm, all of which is delivered in spades by Timothy Olyphant. Until now, Raylan has masked his anger, wearing it as motivation. But now, at dawn, standing on his ex-wife’s balcony, drinking her husband’s beer, Raylan is compelled to acknowledge he’s an angry man.
Too often, Raylan’s anger has been rewarded, but no more: a once-believed asset is now his greatest vulnerability. The episode’s finale is the definition of a narrative inverse. The sun is rising, not setting, revelation is not the end of conflict, but the start of another journey, and Raylan’s only comfort is that his confession is true; this truth offers no relief, only catharsis by way of an ex-lover’s affirmation.
Earlier today, my youngest hit his older brother in anger, frustrated that he was not paying him sufficient attention. He immediately started crying, upset that he hit his brother. Without thinking, I said, “We hurt the ones we love when we respond to them in anger.” Apparently, Raylan Givens was still fresh on my mind.
I knew what my son needed to hear. I knew that learning resolution without anger would serve him well in adolescence and adulthood. It will curb his anxiety and keep his blood pressure down at an age when monitoring such things matters. I knew all this and gladly offered it to my son, yet I have trouble prescribing it for myself. Like Raylan soon discovers in episodes two through the end of the series, anger as motivation, like any habit, is hard to kick.
Like most, I cheered raucously when Bruce Banner reveals the source of his superpower in The Avengers, saying “I’m always angry” just before transforming into the exposed and festering nerve that is his eternally raging ID – The Hulk – and fantastically smashing his fist into an invading Chitauri spacecraft. The release of his rage, as depicted on screen, is a release like none other – coming up from the deepest of depths to breathe in the deepest of breaths. And yet, it refuses the truth about anger, which Raylan cannot forget after nursing his balcony beer, nor can I forget after teaching it to my son. The release of rage can feel so good, and when careful, we can hide it from the ones we love; on a morning run, at the gym, screaming alone in our car, watching Jack Reacher pulverize on small screens and Arnold Schwarzenneger do it on the biggest of screens.
Two months after living vicariously through The Hulk, I was again in a movie theatre, this time lost in the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight saga. An arch nemesis has imprisoned Bruce Wayne in a cavernous pit deep within the earth. No guards, only prisoners and a clear view of the world above. To escape, all one must do is climb out.
Prisoner after prisoner makes the attempt, tying rope around their waste to break their fall if they cannot successfully climb out. Yet, the rope keeps them tethered to the pit, tethered to despair, tethered to hopelessness, and thus no one makes it out.
We watch as Bruce climbs and falls, repeatedly. His tormentor taunts him, which spurs another climb. Hans Zimmer’s triumphant score rises and Bruce says, “I’m angry.” At this point, with a burst of excitement, my cousin leans over and says, “This is going to be good,” expecting our hero to triumph, but he falls harder than before. Nolan has other plans; he is not invested in selling his audience magic beans, spoon feeding us empty calories only to leave the theatre malnourished.
When confronting flesh and blood demons, anger is an asset for adolescents and the uninitiated, and Bruce Wayne is cleverer than that. On the next go, he refuses the rope. He will not be tethered to this tomb. His only option is up and out.
In the pit, in the belly of that beast, lost deep in the wilderness, Bruce learned resurrection, and the hope of salvation to follow, cannot be delivered through anger. Knowing this, letting go of anger is still difficult. If not anger, what would we hold onto? A question not easily reconciled, one Raylan continues to ask himself throughout his series arc as I anticipate doing throughout my own.
