Review of Love & Mercy (2015) by Felipe F — 02 Feb 2016

When I first saw Love & Mercy back in late July I knew I had just seen the best movie of 2015. I went back to the theater and saw it again the next week. The life of Beach Boys co-founder and songwriter Brian Wilson is given something better and more meaningful than the typical biopic treatment. This is not just a rise and fall story or look at a specific time in the subject's life; it is somewhere in between. Paul Dano plays Wilson in the mid to late 1960s as he is just becoming a creative force musically while also beginning to slip slowly into mental illness. John Cusack plays Wilson in the mid 1980s when he is overmedicated and manipulated by Dr. Landy (Paul Giamatti), Wilson's psychiatrist and self-appointed guru, dietician, producer, etc. This was the best and most effective dramatization of a true story in 2015. I didn't know much about Brian Wilson's life, other than that he had mental problems and allegedly spent a few years in bed in the 70s (it was more like three, Cusacks's Wilson says). I knew that Wilson ended up alright and was able to finally complete his masterpiece Smile in 2004, but I didn't know how or when Wilson emerged back into healthy, functional life. The person largely responsible for Wilson's reemergence is Melinda Ledbetter, played by Elizabeth Banks, who meets Wilson at a Cadillac dealership in 1985 and eventually becomes his wife. Through Melinda's eyes, we grow suspicious of the ever-present Dr. Landy and his unconventional (and unethical) methods. My stomach turned up in knots during the scenes of Wilson being abused by Landy in the 80s and by his father in the 60s.

Love & Mercy cuts between Melinda and Wilson's budding relationship in the 80s and Wilson in the 60s challenging himself as a musician and an artist during the creation of the album Pet Sounds, one of my absolute favorite albums ever. We see Dano dropping bobby pins on piano strings to create the rattling effect for "Caroline, No", recording barking dogs, and instructing someone on how to play the bicycle horn while the rest of the band sits around the booth and Mike Love grows listless and frustrated. I've never seen recording studio sessions portrayed as accurately as in Love & Mercy; it's very exciting for the people working and incredibly boring for those that aren't, but have to be in the booth (I have experience being one of the bored people in the booth during a musician friend's recording session). My favorite scene in the movie, aside from the final scene, is of Wilson and Love collaborating on "Good Vibrations," from its beginning as a piano riff Wilson can't get out of his head, to the studio where Love gets very agitated by Wilson's obsession with a few seconds of cello strings. Paul Dano is the kind of actor who I always find sticks out in every movie, but here he really disappears into the Brian Wilson of the 60s in that amazing way that goes beyond impersonation and mimicry to really portray the person. Cusack is incredible at convincingly portraying the Wilson of the 80s as someone that really "survived" the 60s and is still in need of help. Neither actor tries to imitate the other because Love & Mercy understands that Wilson was two different people during those two different decades. In addition to being the best biopic of recent memory, Love & Mercy is also my favorite kind of movie, a love story. Melinda's love is exactly what Wilson's wounded, battered, and fragile soul needed to finally become a third, complete Brian Wilson.