Deciding to bow out of the group’s upcoming Japanese tour, he sets up shop in a recording studio alongside L.A. In the second, set in the 1980s, Cusack shows us Wilson as a broken, confused man under the pharmacological and legal thrall of manipulative therapist Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), finding unlikely love with a Cadillac dealer named Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), who will later become his second wife.įollowing a very brief, unfussy montage of the Beach Boys’ rise to ‘60s pop superpowers, we see Dano’s Wilson, still boyish enough to pass for a standard teen idol, suffer a panic attack on a flight. In one, roughly covering the period from 1965-68, Dano plays Wilson as he resigns from touring, masterminds one of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest masterpieces, and finds his grip on reality slowly loosening. Certainly more conventional than Todd Haynes’ fractured Bob Dylan collage “I’m Not There,” but miles removed from the cookie-cutter approach taken by so many other rock bios, this finely crafted split portrait should win over music nerds skeptical of yet another complicated life being reduced to a series of highlight-reel moments, and provided more mainstream auds are willing to take the trip, Paul Dano and John Cusack’s expert performances should attract an appreciative reception.Īlternating back and forth in time, Pohlad and screenwriters Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner eschew a long-winded biographical approach in favor of two temporally specific parallel narratives. ![]() ![]() ![]() A wonderfully innervating cure for the common musical biopic, Bill Pohlad’s “Love & Mercy” vibrantly illuminates two major breakthroughs - one artistic, one personal - in the life of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.
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