Dano, gentle and inscrutable as a panda bear, conveys the pathos of a young man’s unraveling. Dano create a remarkable composite performance, a set of before-and-after pictures that is also a perfectly unified, hauntingly complex portrait. Working together - but also in isolation from each other, like musicians in separate recording booths - Mr. Their courtship is complicated by the presence of Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), a psychologist who serves as Brian’s guru, dietitian and legal guardian. Instead of telling the story in full, the film shifts back and forth - fluidly and seamlessly - from the ’60s to the ’80s, when Brian, now played by John Cusack, first meets Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), in a Cadillac showroom in Los Angeles. The making of “Pet Sounds” is the centerpiece of “Love & Mercy.” It also represents a plateau of calm and control in the midst of a life full of chaos and pain. We might see our idol, more or less persuasively impersonated by a hard-working actor, strumming a guitar or noodling at a piano, but the complicated labor of creativity is notoriously hard to show on screen.
What is often missing from the formula is any real insight into the reason we might be interested in the first place, which is the music. On screen, the lives of musicians tend to follow a tried-and-true outline: A rise to fame is followed by a personal and professional crisis, often involving drugs, which is followed by a redemptive third act. It’s a loving tribute to the Beach Boys and the man responsible for their distinctive sound, but it goes to deeper and stranger places than most movies of its kind.
It’s a startling image, and it holds out a twofold promise: that the film will take viewers inside its protagonist’s head and that it will pay particular attention to the role that sound played in his life.įor the most part, this movie, a smart, compassionate, refreshingly unconventional biopic directed by Bill Pohlad, makes good on both promises, exploring the mental world and the artistic method of a great artist. The first thing you see in “ Love & Mercy” is an extreme close-up of Brian Wilson’s ear.
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