Love & Mercy (Film Review)
As opposed to the Beatles, I don't know much about the Beach Boys. I did know a few things about Brian Wilson going, though, both via general osmosis and because there isn't a Beatles related book worth its money which fails to point out that Rubber Soul leads to Pet Sounds which leads to Revolver which leads to Brian starting Smile which leads to Sergeant Pepper which isn't the only thing leading to Brian Wlson's breakdown, but contributes to it. (Oh, and Mike Love was in India, too, during those ill fated weeks with the Maharishi, which came in handy for Back in the USSR.) Also Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney have a decades long mutual admiration society & friendship going, and despite strong competition, Brian Wilson wins effortlessly when it comes to "Sixties Pop Culture Icon With Most Tragic Life". Seriously, the man puts fictional woobies in many a fandom to shame. Horrible abusive and exploitative dad who hit him hard enough for Brian to go deaf in one ear? Check. Mental illness not understood and badly treated? Check. Band turning against him at crucial artistic and emotional crisis? Check. Drug abuse? But of course. Evil abusive therapist charlatan moving in to create total dependence and abusing medication and psychology to do so? Check. So that's what I knew going in, that and that the charlatan got the boot at some point, and that Brian Wilson is better off now. But more, I didn't know (like, say, anything about the dynamics between Brian Wilson and his brothers Carl and Dennis), and thus I'm not qualified to say whether or not the film I'm about to review is biographically accurate, though a quick look at Wikipedia (not, of course, necessarily the most reliable information tool) makes it look like no obvious liberties were taken. I'll talk about the movie as a movie, with no contrast and compare to biography.
First of all, the director and his scriptwriters have wisely avoided the biopic curse which usually comes when you go for a "greatest highlights/by the numbers" approach. (A recent example of this would be Mandela, whose subject would have been better served by a miniseries which could have explored the various stages of his life thoroughly, instead of going for the "now he's a lawyer! Now he's an activist! Now the first wife's gone! Here is Winnie! etc." work through Mandela's biography.) Instead of trying to present Brian Wilson's entire life, they pick two different stages, the middle to late 60s (when he's played by Paul Dana) and the 80s (when he's played by John Cusack). While the elements of your avarage pop or rock star saga are there (early success, drugs, crash, recovery via help of true love), they're presented in an entirely different way, and not just because Love & Mercy constantly moves between the 60s and the 80s, but because the film doesn't bother with the "rise of unknown to the top" stage which is so beloved by just about any other take on a musical star that I've seen. (There's a quick montage showing the Beach Boys becoming famous and beloved at the start, but that's it, the first proper scene set in the 60s is when Brian after a panic attack in the air plane decides not to go on tour with the rest of the band but stay at home in the studio instead, working on his response to Rubber Soul. (This, btw, is the only way you know it's 1965 - Brian talking about Rubber Soul just having been released. This movie doesn't offer dates to tell you in which era you are at any given point, the audience is expected to keep up.) It also doesn't bother with that other stalwart of the genre, the recreation of live performances. Instead, and very fittingly given its subjects, it goes for the creation of music in the studio as its musical heart, and it miraculously manages to get across both the sense of joy and musical exploration and the infinite attention to detail Brian Wilson at his artistic peak must have been capable of. What's more, the studio musicians, usually hardly existing at all in rock/pop biopics (and if they do, they're presented as the conventional enemy versus the creative newcomer) are presented as avid and supportive collaborators.
(Incidentally: the producers seem to have acquired all the musical rights, but use the songs with restraint. This is no "greatest hits of the Beach Boys" type of picture, either, but having the rights means we get to listen all the various soundtracks for Pet Sounds being created.)
Another big difference to most other depictions of a musical icon is that Brian Wilson must have been the least macho pop star on the planet. Dano's Wilson is a shy, sweet-natured boy in a man's body who does have drive and determination when it comes to his music but doesn't do shouting matches (be it with his godawful father or cousin Mike) as much as he vanishes into himself and increasingly loses his grip on to reality. Cusack's Wilson is basically a damsel held captive by the California version of Dr. Dracula, in many ways a shell of a man with his sense of self all but eroded, but just enough left to respond when he meets our heroine, Melinda Ledbetter (played by Elizabeth Banks), to reach out to her and ask for help. (Melinda later became and still is his second wife.) While the 60s scenes are all from Brian's pov (there is no scene where he's not present), the 80s are, all but one, from Melinda's, who, writing wise, could have been the most boring character of the film (since she's an angel of mercy and Brian's rescuer without any flaws or the possibility of mixed feelings as much as indicated), but Banks' performance gives her an earthy charm and vivacity that makes you buy it as a viewer and believe it, not to mention that of course it's impossible not to root for Brian to be freed from Dr. Landy the Creep. (Paul Giametti, quickly dropping the faux geniality to reveal the power mad leech within.) Dano and Cusack don't look alike physically, but you buy - at least I did - that they're the same man, decades apart, and the constant intertwining of two eras makes you feel you understand how we get from one version to the other.
Still rare in biopics: there's no vilification or "she just couldn't understand him" blaming of the first wife, who is presented as sympathetic and loving in the 1960s. (By the 80s, the marriage had long been over.) There are two boo-hiss villains, Wilson Snr. in the 60s and Dr. Landy in the 80s, with cousin Mike Love getting the more layered role of commercial objector (i.e. he's presented as the "don't fuck with the formula" type who just wants to continue having hits), but he's not presented as spiteful or malicious, and you can even see where he's coming from when he's pointing out that on Pet Sounds, all the other Beach Boys contribute are their voices, while the instrumental parts come solely from the studio musicians and the music itself solely from Brian, which makes it not a group effort), plus when Brian plays what then develops into Good Vibrations, he immediately recognizes the potential, so he's not presented as hopelessly icompetent. But he does have the role of constant buzzkill when it comes to the joy of musical experimentation. Carl and Dennis Wilson are presented as sympathetic to Brian but helpless to deal with his spirralling out of control mental problems, though you don't get a sense of what they're like as people otherwise. (Whereas Mike Love is given a clear cut personality in the movie.)
The movie is careful not to present Brian's mental issues as the reason for his musical talent (or vice versa the music as causing the mental problems), but it does a great job of getting across of how avarage noises can be both inspiring and frightening to him, depending on his state of being. (It also goes for a mainly auditory approach when it comes to rendering both hallucinations and later the effect of LSD.) And it's not vilifying psychiatrists, either, making it clear the problem isn't therapy or medication but that Landy is abusing both. It also trusts its audience to use their imagination; we don't get shown Wilson Snrs' hitting his sons in their childhood (except for a very very quick image near the end, in a blink and you'll miss it fashion), but when Cusack!Brian describes to Melinda matter-of-factly the difference of sound between"normal spanking" and the noise of his father's beatings, she and the audience get the full implication and are duly horrified. (All the more so because Brian is seemingly unaware he described something unusual.) Being set in California (in both timelines), it's pretty much drenched in sunlight, but there's a difference between the 1960s pop colours and the 1980s pastels. It feels neither rushed nor drawn out, and the two era setting contributes to giving you an inkling of its subjects headspace, especially when they at last collapse into each other (that's the one 80s sequence where we leave Melinda's pov and are in Brian's).
All in all: compelling story, sensitively told, with a cinematic life of its own (which biopics all too often can't really manage). I'm glad I watched it.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1094904.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
First of all, the director and his scriptwriters have wisely avoided the biopic curse which usually comes when you go for a "greatest highlights/by the numbers" approach. (A recent example of this would be Mandela, whose subject would have been better served by a miniseries which could have explored the various stages of his life thoroughly, instead of going for the "now he's a lawyer! Now he's an activist! Now the first wife's gone! Here is Winnie! etc." work through Mandela's biography.) Instead of trying to present Brian Wilson's entire life, they pick two different stages, the middle to late 60s (when he's played by Paul Dana) and the 80s (when he's played by John Cusack). While the elements of your avarage pop or rock star saga are there (early success, drugs, crash, recovery via help of true love), they're presented in an entirely different way, and not just because Love & Mercy constantly moves between the 60s and the 80s, but because the film doesn't bother with the "rise of unknown to the top" stage which is so beloved by just about any other take on a musical star that I've seen. (There's a quick montage showing the Beach Boys becoming famous and beloved at the start, but that's it, the first proper scene set in the 60s is when Brian after a panic attack in the air plane decides not to go on tour with the rest of the band but stay at home in the studio instead, working on his response to Rubber Soul. (This, btw, is the only way you know it's 1965 - Brian talking about Rubber Soul just having been released. This movie doesn't offer dates to tell you in which era you are at any given point, the audience is expected to keep up.) It also doesn't bother with that other stalwart of the genre, the recreation of live performances. Instead, and very fittingly given its subjects, it goes for the creation of music in the studio as its musical heart, and it miraculously manages to get across both the sense of joy and musical exploration and the infinite attention to detail Brian Wilson at his artistic peak must have been capable of. What's more, the studio musicians, usually hardly existing at all in rock/pop biopics (and if they do, they're presented as the conventional enemy versus the creative newcomer) are presented as avid and supportive collaborators.
(Incidentally: the producers seem to have acquired all the musical rights, but use the songs with restraint. This is no "greatest hits of the Beach Boys" type of picture, either, but having the rights means we get to listen all the various soundtracks for Pet Sounds being created.)
Another big difference to most other depictions of a musical icon is that Brian Wilson must have been the least macho pop star on the planet. Dano's Wilson is a shy, sweet-natured boy in a man's body who does have drive and determination when it comes to his music but doesn't do shouting matches (be it with his godawful father or cousin Mike) as much as he vanishes into himself and increasingly loses his grip on to reality. Cusack's Wilson is basically a damsel held captive by the California version of Dr. Dracula, in many ways a shell of a man with his sense of self all but eroded, but just enough left to respond when he meets our heroine, Melinda Ledbetter (played by Elizabeth Banks), to reach out to her and ask for help. (Melinda later became and still is his second wife.) While the 60s scenes are all from Brian's pov (there is no scene where he's not present), the 80s are, all but one, from Melinda's, who, writing wise, could have been the most boring character of the film (since she's an angel of mercy and Brian's rescuer without any flaws or the possibility of mixed feelings as much as indicated), but Banks' performance gives her an earthy charm and vivacity that makes you buy it as a viewer and believe it, not to mention that of course it's impossible not to root for Brian to be freed from Dr. Landy the Creep. (Paul Giametti, quickly dropping the faux geniality to reveal the power mad leech within.) Dano and Cusack don't look alike physically, but you buy - at least I did - that they're the same man, decades apart, and the constant intertwining of two eras makes you feel you understand how we get from one version to the other.
Still rare in biopics: there's no vilification or "she just couldn't understand him" blaming of the first wife, who is presented as sympathetic and loving in the 1960s. (By the 80s, the marriage had long been over.) There are two boo-hiss villains, Wilson Snr. in the 60s and Dr. Landy in the 80s, with cousin Mike Love getting the more layered role of commercial objector (i.e. he's presented as the "don't fuck with the formula" type who just wants to continue having hits), but he's not presented as spiteful or malicious, and you can even see where he's coming from when he's pointing out that on Pet Sounds, all the other Beach Boys contribute are their voices, while the instrumental parts come solely from the studio musicians and the music itself solely from Brian, which makes it not a group effort), plus when Brian plays what then develops into Good Vibrations, he immediately recognizes the potential, so he's not presented as hopelessly icompetent. But he does have the role of constant buzzkill when it comes to the joy of musical experimentation. Carl and Dennis Wilson are presented as sympathetic to Brian but helpless to deal with his spirralling out of control mental problems, though you don't get a sense of what they're like as people otherwise. (Whereas Mike Love is given a clear cut personality in the movie.)
The movie is careful not to present Brian's mental issues as the reason for his musical talent (or vice versa the music as causing the mental problems), but it does a great job of getting across of how avarage noises can be both inspiring and frightening to him, depending on his state of being. (It also goes for a mainly auditory approach when it comes to rendering both hallucinations and later the effect of LSD.) And it's not vilifying psychiatrists, either, making it clear the problem isn't therapy or medication but that Landy is abusing both. It also trusts its audience to use their imagination; we don't get shown Wilson Snrs' hitting his sons in their childhood (except for a very very quick image near the end, in a blink and you'll miss it fashion), but when Cusack!Brian describes to Melinda matter-of-factly the difference of sound between"normal spanking" and the noise of his father's beatings, she and the audience get the full implication and are duly horrified. (All the more so because Brian is seemingly unaware he described something unusual.) Being set in California (in both timelines), it's pretty much drenched in sunlight, but there's a difference between the 1960s pop colours and the 1980s pastels. It feels neither rushed nor drawn out, and the two era setting contributes to giving you an inkling of its subjects headspace, especially when they at last collapse into each other (that's the one 80s sequence where we leave Melinda's pov and are in Brian's).
All in all: compelling story, sensitively told, with a cinematic life of its own (which biopics all too often can't really manage). I'm glad I watched it.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1094904.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.