Movie Review: Love and Mercy

Love and Mercy (2015)

PG-13

4.0 Stars out of 5

Director                                Bill Pohlad
Writer                                   Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner
Cinematography                 Robert D. Yeoman
Music                                    Atticus Ross

Elizabeth Banks                  Melinda Ledbetter
Paul Dano                            Brian Wilson (1960’s)
John Cusak                          Brian Wilson (1980’s)
Paul Giamatti                      Dr. Gene Landy
Graham Rogers                  Al Jardine
Kenny Wormald                 Dennis Wilson
Jake Abel                             Mike Love
Brett Davern                       Carl Wilson
Erin Darke                           Marilyn Wilson
Bill Camp                             Murry Wilson

 

The standard bio-pic for musicians is such a tried and true formula: happy obscurity, struggle into early success, rising success/initial drug and/or alcohol abuse, severe substance abuse/faltering career, intervention, relapse or two/decaying career, final redemption and minor career recovery. It happens every time. Well not every time, “Love and Mercy” is the exception that may prove the rule. The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson’s story as depicted in “Love and Mercy” definitely hews to a different, not necessarily refreshing musical career path. “Love and Mercy” is a definitely different examination of a musician’s life, but it is also most definitely not an easy film to watch. Painful is a much better one word description of Brian Wilson’s musical and personal life.

Director Bill Pohlad and writers Oren Overman and Michael Alan Lerner have written and adapted a screenplay that compares the life of Brian Wilson in the mid-sixties (well played by Paul Dano) when his musical genius was coming into full flower to his life in the mid-eighties (equally well played by John Cusak) when Wilson lived under the complete control of his psychologist, Dr. Eugene Landy (ominously played by Paul Giamatti). During the sequence in the eighties, Brian meets a Cadillac salesperson, Melinda Ledbetter (played by Elizabeth Banks). Cusak portrays Wilson as a very diffident, halting individual, afraid to make any move that would meet with the disapproval of Dr. Landy. His first meeting with Ledbetter is presented in a manner to emphasis his helplessness. She is naturally confused but attracted to him, perhaps because of his evident need. As they become more involved with one another, his mental problems and subservience to Landy becoming increasingly clear. These scenes interspersed with scenes from the sixties are squirm-inducing they are so painful to watch. Cusak’s depictions of Wilson as little more than a husk of a man are heart breaking.

Interleaved with the evolving relationship between Cusak and Banks in the eighties is a second, separate evolution of Brian Wilson, this one as a young man in the sixties. Early in the sixties scenes is a panic attack experienced by Wilson on an airplane. It is but the beginning of a singular path for Brian away from the Beach Boys, his two brothers (Dennis and Carl), cousin (Mike Love) and friend (Al Jardine). Following the panic attack, Brian asks for and receives permission to withdraw from a planned tour in Japan. While the rest of the group is touring, Brian begins an experimental phase in rock music that has been critiqued by music critics as singular. Brian institutes the use of session musicians to create a “sound” that is as instrumental (no pun intended) to the overall musical effect of the group as the lead singer. The movie emphasizes the painstaking and driven manner in which Brian works with various session members, leading them and pointing them in the direction he wants and can hear in his mind; it is as if Pohlad wants the viewing audience to imagine the inner workings of a modern composer, one that might be on a par with any of the various musical geniuses down through recent history. A priori, I would have thought depicting this process would be as uninvolving as watching someone write a letter, but in fact Pohlad achieves this film’s highest point of artistry in conveying the process of layering various tracks of music and of getting the various musicians to achieve a kind of perfection (to Brian’s ears) on each of those tracks.

The sixties sequence is brilliantly paired and interleaved with the eighties sequence via some inspired film editing. In the sixties, we watch Brian grow and achieve a kind of apotheosis in his music, even as his life and mental stability spiral down and out of control. Paired up to the sixties, the sine wave of his life turns positive as he slowly leaves the mental trough that he has lived in under the control of Dr. Landy. According to the film, Melinda’s love and concern for Brian coupled with his slow movement away from Landy permit Brian to finally regain some independence and certainly better medical care. The movie strongly implies much of this late in life success comes as a result of Melinda’s intervention. A careful examination of Brian’s life from sources other than the movie would strongly suggest the movie has greatly simplified these two decades in Brian’s life. In fact, the movie implicitly suggests that after the mid-sixties, Brian achieved very little for the next two decades;  a quick review of the albums released by Brian in solo efforts, collaboration with other artists and with the Beach Boys would clearly indicate, nothing could be further from the truth. He remained busy right up the present day.

If unlike me you are a Beach Boys fan, you might enjoy the musical interludes where brief renditions of their various hits and a few of their non-hits are played. However, this is a movie about a composer, his path to the various end products of his efforts, not so much about the musical final products. If you are interested in watching how modern music can be created in a studio by adding one track to another, and how musicians are asked to work through multiple versions of a piece of music until the man driving the process is at last satisfied, then this could be your movie. But mostly, this is a movie about a man that is a musician that has is life derailed by drugs and some personal mental issues that were likely exacerbated by those drugs. There are other actors in the drama of Brian Wilson’s life (a demanding father, a fellow member of the band that wants to go in another musical direction, a bad doctor and a loving second wife), but to my eyes it seemed mostly a tragedy of a life with no clear reason for the tragedy. Was it mental illness, drugs, an abusive father, or some combination of these and other factors? I found this to be the biggest flaw in the movie – what was it that ailed Brian the most? In any event, if you enjoy dramas that are intricately edited, professionally acted that depict the rise and fall of a gifted artist, then this is definitely your movie.

One final point, besides the inspired parts of the movie showing Brian in the studio, a second part that is substantially moving is the end credits. As they roll, the audience is presented with a view of the actual Brian Wilson in the early 2000’s playing his music to an audience. One can easily see that still extant mental struggle of this now not-so-young man as he stares out into his audience, but even more clearly evident in his face is what seems to be some new found joy in playing his music for his fans. The song he plays: Love and Mercy.