Film review: Love & Mercy is a commanding and artful film full of excellent performances

Director Bill Pohlad’s film focuses on two key moments in Brian Wilson’s life: one of creation and destruction, as Wilson conceives of the group’s transformative Pet Sounds album, and one of rebirth two decades later.

Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy. Courtesy Roadside Attractions

Love & Mercy

Director: Bill Pohlad

Starring: John Cusack, Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks, Paul Giamatti

Four stars

Brian Wilson’s life is too big for a movie. The story of the brilliant but troubled co-founder of The Beach Boys barely lends itself to a coherent linear narrative, let alone a single film.

Thankfully Love & Mercy doesn't attempt to cover it all, or even most of it.

Instead, director Bill Pohlad's film focuses on two key moments in Wilson's life: one of creation and destruction, as Wilson conceives of the group's transformative Pet Sounds album, and one of rebirth two decades later.

Even telling those stories is a little ambitious for a two-hour film but Pohlad’s carefully woven vignettes manage to hit the necessary notes and explode expectations of what a biopic can and should be. It’s a feat that will likely satisfy those who know Wilson’s story well, while also whetting the appetite – and shocking – those who don’t.

In telling the two stories, Pohlad made the bold artistic choice to cast two actors to portray Wilson: Paul Dano and John Cusack. While they could hardly pass for distant cousins, let alone the same man a few decades and a lot of substance abuse later, it's a technique that helps to further separate Love & Mercy from any allegiance to a just-the-facts narrative.

The 1960s story joins Wilson and The Beach Boys after their early successes, at the moment he decides to forgo their Japan tour to stay at home and write. Many of the most invigorating scenes in the film take place in the recording studio as Wilson pushes famed session musicians The Wrecking Crew out of their musical comfort zones and into bold, new areas. What emerges are the tracks that will end up on Pet Sounds.

Now so laced in our collective consciousness, it’s fascinating to watch Wilson bicker with Mike Love (Jake Abel) and his father (Bill Camp) over whether or not he has strayed too far from the peppy “surfer sounds” of the band’s early work.

“Surfers don’t even like our music,” says Wilson defensively at one point. Dennis Wilson (Kenny Wormald), the only actual surfer in the group, chimes in with a perfectly timed: “They don’t.”

And then Wilson takes LSD for the first time and things take a strange turn as his auditory hallucinations begin to manifest and his already fraught working relationship with Love sours.

In the 1980s we find a very altered Wilson, broken by drugs, mental illness and despair following the bizarre death of his brother Dennis.

Pohlad focuses the story on the beginnings of his relationship with his now-wife, Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), who he met inside a Cadillac showroom.

The audience slowly discovers the peculiarities of Wilson’s relationship with the controversial, 24-hour therapist Dr Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti) as does Melinda.

Bedecked in shoulder pads, cinched-waist dresses and pumps, Banks delivers an outstanding performance as the beautiful saleswoman who finds herself in the unenviable position of being the only person driven enough to try to wrest Wilson from Landry’s hold.

Subtle but powerful, she conveys Melinda's perception of the complicated situation with just a glance – even as Giamatti's Landy goes full pit bull on her. Love & Mercy proves that Banks is capable of more than comedy and hopefully a wider range of roles will follow.

For his part, Cusack might not wholly disappear into the role but it is a profound and occasionally heartbreaking portrayal of a man at his most disconnected. It’s also the actor’s best work in ages.

Dano, meanwhile, is utterly perfect as the tortured but still-hopeful creative genius on the brink of psychosis.

Love & Mercy might not go as deep, or as dark, as it could, but it's a commanding and artful film that's full of excellent and worthy performances whether you're a student of Brian Wilson or just a curious tourist.