Angels and demons

Brian Wilson is sui generis -- a preternaturally gifted composer who apparently can hold symphonies in his head, a reluctant rock star who at the height of the Beach Boys' fame removed himself from the spotlight to brew up remarkable music in a lab. And for a long time, he felt like an American tragedy, one of those holy ones we lost to dru

gs or madness -- a bath-robed Leviathan playing piano in his living room sandbox.

Bill Pohlad's Love & Mercy is Wilson's story, but I hesitate to call it a bio-pic for fear of evoking stagy re-enactments of "eureka" moments and minor characters stooped from the exposition that's been laden on their backs. It is a kind of valentine, a smart and unconventional movie about a smart and unconventional man. It is a movie about the creative process -- and the re-creative process. It is about how human beings might lend each other grace.

It begins with a journey into the young Brian Wilson's head. Wilson (who at this age is played by Paul Dano) is a kind of aural visionary. He hears more than voices in his head, he hears great sweeps of sound -- timpani, cellos and fraught horns as well as the usual piano, guitar, electric bass and harmonized voices. We understand that this is his gift, but there's something frightening about it, a sense that Wilson couldn't turn the noise down if he wanted to. He's quite literally possessed by it, and he's driven to realize it in the studio. But to do so he needs more than what his brothers Carl (Brett Davern) and Dennis (Kenny Wormald), his cousin Mike Love (Jake Abel) and childhood friend Al Jardine (Graham Rogers) can supply. He needs a bigger paintbox.

So he sends the band out on the road without him, with a surrogate (first Glen Campbell, then, Bruce Johnston) playing bass and singing his vocal parts while he holes up in the studio with drummer Hal Blaine (Johnny Sneed) and the studio musicians who became known as the Wrecking Crew (see the Denny Tedesco documentary for more information) to work on what would become the milestone Pet Sounds album.

This story is cross-cut with scenes from the life of an older Brian Wilson (played with great tenderness and vulnerability by John Cusack) who, while shopping for a new car, meets a sympathetic Cadillac saleswoman named Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks). Melinda doesn't recognize the odd but gentle middle-aged man who has removed his shoes before sitting behind the wheel of a car, but it's not hard to infer that he has been damaged in some fundamental way. Yet apparently he has means -- the vaguely sinister type hovering nearby is a bodyguard of sorts. And when he decides to take the Fleetwood, we are treated to our first look at Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti) -- Wilson's therapist, executive producer, business manager, songwriting partner, business adviser, spiritual guru, dietitian and legal guardian -- who informs Melinda that his client is a very famous man, and that they expect an appropriate discount.

Even those unfamiliar with Wilson's entanglement with Landy will immediately recognize this character as the Iago of the piece. Giamatti -- a fine actor who hasn't always chosen his roles well -- comes across as nightmare fuel, with a rictus smile composed of too many moving parts and a helmet hairstyle unhip in any century. (By all reports, the real-life Landy, who died in 2012, was actually more outlandish. We can understand why Brian left the note on the car seat for Ledbetter to find: "Lonely Scared Frightened."

Told primarily from Ledbetter's viewpoint, this part (set in the late '80s and early '90s) takes on some of the flavor of a detective story as she gradually discovers the depths of Landy's exploitation of Brian, and the way he has isolated his "patient" from family and friends. Meanwhile, the '60s section, which is shot in a dreamy, filtered way that evokes both the period and Brian's uncoupling from reality, is as impressionistic and melancholy as one of the songs from Smile, Brian's planned follow-up to Pet Sounds that wasn't completed until 2004.

The more you know about the Beach Boys, the more you'll appreciate the attention director Pohlad lavishes on the details. If you are of a certain bent, prepare to geek out over the vintage recording gear and instruments. I can think of no movie that so accurately and lovingly depicts the way records are made. If, like me, you're one of the obsessives who actually listened to all the instrumental tracks, vocals-only tracks, and alternate mixes that were included in the 1997 four-CD boxed set The Pet Sounds Sessions, you'll be thrilled by the scenes of young Brian ecstatic in the studio.

The rapport between him and the session players is intoxicating -- they recognize the cracked genius for what he is as he incorporates their accidents into the recordings, as they slowly spin together the sound that's in his head. "Phil Spector's got nothing on you," an enraptured Blaine tells Brian, "you're really out there kid, and you're blowing our minds!"

Love & Mercy is the rare movie in which everything works. Cusack and Dano -- who manage to resemble the real Brian Wilson while looking nothing alike -- collaborate remotely to give us a coherent portrait of a man in pain. Banks believably conveys the steely resolve of a woman who has lived a bit and recognizes it's worth fighting to maintain the connection she has made with wounded Brian. Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner give us a delicate, well-observed script that doesn't lean heavily on the tropes of addiction and mental illness; they don't try to explain Brian's madness, although they acknowledge it may have been compounded by drug use.

Even if you're only a casual Beach Boys fan, you might find the "sonic collages" assembled by composer Atticus Ross largely from bits and scraps of the Beach Boys sonic archives as instructive as they are delightful. I can't remember the last time I was looking forward to getting my hands on a film's soundtrack. (Please, there will be an album, right? There will. Thanks, Google.)

There is an unhappy rhythm to most rock careers -- at times it seems they end in plane crash or overdose or farce. But Brian Wilson managed to survive long enough to perform over the closing credits of the superlative movie of his life. Love & Mercy is a sweet and beautiful film, as effervescent and deceptively sophisticated as "God Only Knows."

MovieStyle on 06/19/2015