4.5/5
Give me a moment. I will get to discussing Love & Mercy and all of its many pleasures and virtues. I will tell you all about how it only gets better the longer it sits with me; how it is stacked with performances so good that the actors themselves fade into the background like the clicks of a metronome; how it uses some of the most popular songs of all time in ways so novel and precise that the songs themselves seem to reveal undiscovered notes; how it accomplishes all of this without stopping for a drink at the fountains of familiarity. But first, if you will, an aside.
Picture this: the film cuts to black. The house lights come up. I’m sitting in the cinema waiting for the credits to finish, for rarely do I skip them. A gentleman in the row in front of me slowly rises from his chair as a young woman, assumedly his lady-lovely, glances up at him with anticipation, as if anxious for a confirmation of some long-held suspicion. The man simply stands there and stares at the screen for a few brief moments, allowing fair time to find himself, before turning into the light to break his partner’s suspense. The light reveals a face on the verge of tears, his whole body bristling from having been bathed anew in cinematic warmth. Instead of breaking down, however, he reaches for his significant other and kisses her as if it were the first time that truly mattered.
The drive home found my imagination lit at both ends, conjuring one context after another for the profound moment of intimacy I had just seen. Was the man really such an admirer of The Beach Boys, or did he see so much of his own torture in Brian Wilson that to see him complete a journey from psychosis to self-directed clarity gave him hope for a brand new day of his very own? I can’t help but speculate. I have always said that the difference between music and film is that great music gets us through the moment whilst great films show us who we really are. Only great films about great music, it follows, are capable of doing both. Love & Mercy is just such a picture. I’ll never know the man from the cinema, but I could see on his face a smile that had traveled both roads, and it was clearly the film that had carried him through.
Now for the review. The film begins with a shot of a young Brian Wilson (Paul Dano), leader and primary lyricist of The Beach Boys, rambling aimlessly about music, perhaps to one (or several) of the voices in his head. The scene is photographed in coarse-grain 16mm film to mimic vintage documentary footage, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought it actually was documentary footage. Paul Dano’s performance is so candid and lifelike that the artifice of moviemaking completely evaporates the first time we see him. He doesn’t read dialog as much as he grasps at words from a pot-laced cloud of latent anxiety.
It’s this anxiety that seems at once to be Brian’s hindrance and his gift; if he was normal, where would that great music have come from? And what great music it is, although few others can see it. His father, now fired from the band, lends only enough support to lead Brian into explosive arguments that keep him small and vulnerable. It is because of this belittling (from “It might be something” to “I don’t care for it” in the same conversation) that Brian never seems comfortable in his own skin. He experiences auditory hallucinations, and for every real voice singing his praises, there’s a false one tearing him down. The biggest surprise for me is that Brian does not exhibit the egocentric tendencies drawn in similar films about similar people — he’s simply a very troubled young man with something to say and very few of the right people listening. With no one to turn to as his hallucinations grow louder and louder, we begin to realize that music may be his only effective method of self-medication. Throughout the production of what would become The Beach Boys’ most acclaimed album, Pet Sounds, Brian desperately tries to explain that he simply needs to “get it out”. Nobody realized he meant it literally.
This era is intercut with another part of Brian Wilson’s life in the 80’s, the story of how he met his future wife Melinda Ledbecker, a car-salesman and former model. Melinda, played here by a never-better Elizabeth Banks, enters Brian Wilson’s life in the midst of what was perhaps his psychological low. Brian, brought to life in this thread by John Cusack, walks into her dealership requesting a car, a Cadillac, although as soon as we see him, we know something is wrong. Gone is the vitality present in the footage from the 60’s. This is a new Brian Wilson, a benign husk of a man kept so isolated and heavily medicated by his doctor Eugene Landy, played here by Paul Giamatti, that he can barely have a coherent conversation, let alone carry out a relationship. Yet there is just enough spark beneath the numbness to reveal everything he could be, to Melinda, to music, and to himself. We want to see him get better because it’s clear as day that he’s capable of it. If only it wasn’t for that damned doctor.
The songs of the Beach Boys defy time and touch – I’m listening to “Good Vibrations” right now as I write this review – so to see them used in something other than a Greatest Hits compilation in the form of a movie is perhaps more shocking than it should be. There isn’t a song in here that isn’t placed with specific narrative purpose, so much so that to hear them being made becomes like listening to a man hopelessly asphyxiated by the riptides of his own mind. I was reminded of the illustrations of artist Louis Wain; the deeper into his illness he slipped, the more abstract and impenetrable his work seemed to become.
In Brian’s case the art wasn’t quite so out there, but for the band mates who lived with the behavior that created it, it proved quite a fright. At first, co-songwriter Mike Love is the only one besides Brian’s father who objects to the direction he is taking with their music. After reading some of the lyrics that would populate Pet Sounds, he repeatedly begs Brian to stick to the formula instead of pursuing these rabbit holes of confessional melancholy, which he claims won’t be profitable. His words suggest envy and frustration, yet the performance by Jake Abel conveys a genuine empathy beneath the sniping. With everyone else fawning over Brian Wilson the wunderkind, who else is left to be concerned for Brian Wilson the man?
Here’s something I thought I’d never say: the greatest strength of the score is that I cannot remember a single thing about it. There is a lone exception: there are moments when the composer, Atticus Ross, blends the songs of The Beach Boys together into a chaotic flurry when Brian is on the verge of break or revelation, sometimes both. Beyond that, the score melts so completely into the tapestry that I remember it not as music but as a series of underlines. I remember all of the emotions it punctuates and all of the narrative stitching it performs, but the music itself remains unobtrusive. It seems to tread featherlike throughout the film, as if frightened by the possibility of overpowering its subject matter. That’s hardly a bad thing. When you’re in a film overflowing with such incredible pop songs, perhaps it’s best not to step on any toes.
If there is any flaw in the film – oh how grouchy I feel even mentioning this when the movie is so good otherwise – it is that the split time structure often left me torn between two fascinating stories rather than led through a seamless marriage of both. There is a slight distance between the two threads, and the casting of an actor as iconic as John Cusack doesn’t help this. Halfway through, however, I decided to stop indulging in such clinical punditry. I took off my critic cap and simply went with it, and I’m glad I did. Cusack soon sinks so deeply into the role that although one never forgets that it’s him, he still delivers one of his most nuanced, committed performances in a career full of great roles.
My mind returns to the couple from the cinema. I remember the man’s face so vividly as he turned to embrace his love. It was as if for the first time, he had truly been seen. That’s all the selling I need to do. As a music film, the thing simply shines. As an exposé of a man on a wild goose chase for inner peace, it is perhaps equally affecting. Fans and newcomers alike will experience the film with two questions in mind: 1) What would the world be without the music of Brian Wilson?, and 2) What would Brian Wilson be without the music of Brian Wilson? The answer to both: god only knows.
Spencer Moleda is a freelance writer, script supervisor, and motion picture researcher residing in Los Angeles, California. His experience ranges from reviewing movies to providing creative guidance to fledgling film projects. You can reach him at: www.spencermoleda.com
Spencer Moleda is a freelance writer, script supervisor, and motion picture researcher residing in Los Angeles, California. His experience ranges from reviewing movies to providing creative guidance to fledgling film projects. You can reach him at: [email protected]