Love & Mercy,
directed by Bill Pohlad
(PG-13, 121 minutes)
Brian Wilson is a gifted composer and a reluctant rock star who at the height of the Beach Boys' fame removed himself from the spotlight to create remarkable music in a lab. And for a long time he felt like an American tragedy.
Bill Pohlad's Love & Mercy is Wilson's story, a smart and unconventional movie about a smart and unconventional man and the creative process.
It begins with a journey into young and already successful Wilson's head (played at this age by Paul Dano) where he hears great sweeps of sound -- timpani, cellos, horns, piano, guitar, electric bass and soaring harmonized voices. He's possessed by it and is 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), cousin Mike Love (Jake Abel) and childhood friend Al Jardine (Graham Rogers) can supply.
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 a studio with drummer Hal Blaine (Johnny Sneed) and studio musicians who became known as the Wrecking Crew to work on what would become the milestone Pet Sounds album.
This story is cross-cut with scenes from the life of older Brian Wilson (John Cusack) who, while shopping for a new car, meets a sympathetic Cadillac salesman named Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks). Melinda doesn't recognize the odd middle-aged man, but easily figures out that he has been damaged. When he decides to buy a Fleetwood, we get our first look at Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), Wilson's therapist, executive producer, business manager, songwriting partner, business adviser, dietitian and legal guardian, who informs Melinda that his client is a famous man and that they expect an appropriate discount.
Giamatti comes across as nightmare fuel; we can understand why Brian leaves a note on the car seat for Ledbetter to find. He's "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 the period and Brian's uncoupling from reality, is impressionistic and melancholy.
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 -- give us a coherent portrait of a man in pain. Banks believably conveys the steely resolve of a woman who recognizes it's worth fighting to maintain the connection she has made with wounded Brian.
There is an unhappy rhythm to many rock careers. But Brian Wilson managed to survive long enough to perform over the closing credits of the superlative movie of his life.
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MovieStyle on 09/18/2015