"Love & Mercy" Review

Love & Mercy is a biopic about Brian Wilson, one of the founding members of The Beach Boys. What sets it apart from the Ray's and Capote's and Walk the Line's of the world is a rather unique narrative structure and complex sound design. Director Bill Polhad has crafted a very inward-focused film that places us inside Wilson's head in a way that most other biopics fail to do with their subjects. In that sense, Love & Mercy is a perfect expression of the introverted Wilson himself. It should go without saying that this is easily one of the best films of the year.

The story jumps between two eras of Wilson's life: the 1960s in which he starts to pull away from his band mates in order to create more unique sounds and the 1980s in which he meets a Cadillac saleswoman (Elizabeth Banks) while under the care of Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti).

60s Wilson is portrayed by Paul Dano, while John Cusack takes over in the 80s scenes. Both performances are worthy of Oscar consideration in their own right, but Dano stands out as a misunderstood young man struggling to get everyone on board with his vision. It's the scenes where Dano is frantically dashing around the recording studio, fixing notes for the saxophonists or insisting to another player that conflicting keys will work with the right composition, that the film is at its most electrifying.

Understandably, the film is all about the music. An assortment of Beach Boys essentials punctuate certain scenes while score composer Atticus Ross does something truly unique with them at other moments. Ross gives us several separate collages of sounds that fade together to denote thoughts going through Wilson's head. Oftentimes, you can't tell whether we're in the studio listening to recordings or stuck inside Wilson's mind or both.

I was only slightly let down by Giamatti's portrayal of Landy as a one-note movie villain, especially later in the film. He delivers the perfect amount of smarm, but it definitely feels like the real-life Wilson family had a hand in deciding how Landy should be portrayed. That really made the difference between the 60s and 80s scenes. While the 60s show us Wilson's emerging psychosis and how it affects his music as well as his family and friends, the 80s eventually start to feel like a contrived defeat-the-villain plot. Figuratively, it's much more interesting to watch Wilson try to break free from his broken state and the demons of his past instead of literally watching Landy yell and treat everyone like trash until he's served with legal documentation against his practices.

All around though, the film excels thanks to stellar performances and stylistic choices as unique as Wilson himself. Love & Mercy is a fitting tribute to the life, mind and music of a pop icon.

A-