Love and Mercy is a beautiful and nuanced look into the creative genius, self-destruction, and redemption of Brian Wilson. Paul Dano and John Cusack both play Wilson at two stages in the musician's life; Dano during Wilson's hectic, acid-fueled period in the late-Sixties recording the Beach Boys' masterpiece album, "Pet Sounds," and Cusack as Wilson during his semi-reclusive career in the late-Eighties in which he falls in love with his current wife, Melinda (Elizabeth Banks) much to the dismay of his manipulative psychiatrist, Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti). Unlike previous made-for-television movies that have tried and failed to capture Wilson's creative process, Pohlad and screenwriter Oren Moverman rely on flashbacks to simultaneously tell Wilson's story as well as 16mm film to give the film a realistic look when Wilson is in the recording studio. The result is a sublime and moving look at the life and work of a musician, whom Art Garfunkel called, "rock n- roll's answer to Mozart."
Paul Dano, known for playing second-fiddle against actors like Daniel-Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood and Hugh Jackman in Prisoners, gives a remarkable and memorable performance as the young Brian Wilson. Dano channels the angst and isolation he delivered in Little Miss Sunshine and emulates Wilson's child-like energy and ambition based on audio excerpts of Wilson talking to his musicians during the "Pet Sounds" sessions. Cusack gives a solid and idiosyncratic performance as the middle-aged Wilson as he successfully captures Wilson's mannerisms without any grandstanding or melodrama. Elizabeth Banks gives a subtle, yet stoic performance as Melinda Ledbetter as she tries to understand Wilson, his traumatic past, and act as his angel of love and mercy. Out of all the performances, Paul GIamatti is stunning as the paranoid and manic Eugene Landy. Like Laurence Fishburne's Ike Turner in What's Love Got To Do With It?, Giamatti thrives on channeling the ego and control Landy had over Wilson whether it be from forcing a hamburger out of Wilson's throat or his encounters with Melinda.
The problem with telling the story of Brian Wilson, or any of the Beach Boys for that matter, is that there is so many areas to cover that one loses sight on Brian Wilson's story whether it is his brother, Dennis, being involved with the Manson Family, Mike Love's (Jake Abel) constant lawsuits again Brian over the band's name, or the Oedipal fights between the Wilson brothers and their father/former manager, Murray (Bill Camp). However, Pohlad and Moverman's script does not lose sight over Wilson's manic state and recovery and is brilliantly accentuated by Atticus Ross' score, which emphasizes Wilson's emotional state and inner psyche. Love and Mercy almost mirrors Wilson's canon of music as it is full of good vibrations.
