• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Jun 04, 2015 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

By the 1980s, Brian Wilson was a wreck. His mental and emotional problems had gone misdiagnosed for years and were magnified by decades of drug and alcohol abuse. He took the death of his brother (and fellow Beach Boy) Dennis very hard; by the mid-80s, Wilson has living like a recluse, had bloated to more than 300 pounds, and would refuse to get out of bed for days. He became isolated from his family and bandmates and intent on eating, drinking, and drugging himself to death.

Love & Mercy diverges from the tired rock-pop biopic track—the one typified by films like Ray and Walk the Line, and parodied so perfectly by Walk Hard—by pinpointing focus on two specific periods of Wilson’s life. The film pivots between eras, with 1960s Brian Wilson being played by Paul Dano and ‘80s Wilson by John Cusack. The earlier period centers largely on the making of Pet Sounds, one of pop music’s watershed albums, and the beginnings of Wilson’s mental health issues and drug abuse; the latter centers on one of the musician’s even darker eras, when he was under the manipulation of psychotherapist Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti) and over-medicated to a near-vegetable state. In Love & Mercy, the younger Wilson is on a downward spiral, while the elder one is gradually trending upwards—Elizabeth Banks plays Melinda, Wilson’s second wife, who wrested him away from his abusive handlers and helped him open a new, healthy and creative chapter late in life. The dual story-lines create a compelling parallel narrative.

Paul Dano is particularly strong as the young, unraveling genius, and Cusack shares enough in common with his performance to be believed as his older self. (Credit must also be given to Paul Giamatti, who is terrifying as Love & Mercy‘s ergo villain.) If there’s a knock to the movie, it’s that it probably takes too much trivia about Wilson’s life for granted—knowledgeable rock fans will probably know enough to fill in the gaps, but casual audiences may have a hard time keeping up with time jumps and important events that are only referenced in passing. (The film seems to assume that everyone watching it will already know things like who Van Dyke Parks is, the sad details of Dennis Wilson’s final years, and the Beach Boys’ post-Pet Sounds album output.) The more viewers go into the film already knowing about Wilson, the more they’ll get out of it.

www.loveandmercyfilm.com

Author rating: 6.5/10