Love & Mercy | Little White Lies

Love & Mercy

10 Jul 2015 / Released: 10 Jul 2015

Words by Cormac O'Brien

Directed by Bill Pohlad

Starring Elizabeth Banks, John Cusack, and Paul Dano

A person sits on a wooden deck in front of a green building, with palm trees in the background under a blue sky.
A person sits on a wooden deck in front of a green building, with palm trees in the background under a blue sky.
3

Anticipation.

Dano and Cusack and Banks and Giamatti, Oh my, this could be very interesting.

4

Enjoyment.

Genuinely arresting, and a refreshingly original approach to pop biography.

4

In Retrospect.

It has a lasting effect, largely down to committed performances from all concerned.

Two chap­ters in the tumul­tuous life of volatile Beach Boys front-man, Bri­an Wilson.

Oren Mover­man, the writer behind Todd Haynes’ cubist Bob Dylan biopic from 2007, I’m Not There, scripts this screen biog­ra­phy of trou­bled Beach Boys lead­er/­co-founder, Bri­an Wil­son, with Bill Pohlad step­ping out of his usu­al producer’s seat and mov­ing over to direct­ing. This is a more straight­for­ward tale than Haynes’ film; it isn’t a sur­re­al extrap­o­la­tion of Wilson’s image, pre­sent­ed in the same teas­ing mytho­log­i­cal man­ner. But Love & Mer­cy still employs tech­niques sub­tly to build an astound­ing sense of grav­i­tas around the mys­te­ri­ous singer-songwriter.

As the younger Wil­son, Paul Dano strides through record­ing stu­dio scenes with fre­net­ic enthu­si­asm, a mae­stro at work, some­times mad­den­ing­ly obsessed, at oth­ers crip­pling­ly inde­ci­sive. Lat­er, beset by men­tal ill­ness, dis­so­cia­tive and con­ver­sa­tion­al­ly off-key, his slow drug addled decline becomes painful to watch. John Cusack, the old­er Wil­son, is phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal­ly belea­guered, con­tem­pla­tive and inscrutable. He’s left behind the need for soci­etal deco­rum, but remains refresh­ing­ly direct.

A nar­ra­tive pen­du­lum that swings ruth­less­ly between the 60s and 80s, and the inter­ven­ing years remain a mys­tery of pre­sumed steady dete­ri­o­ra­tion. This is essen­tial­ly an account sur­round­ing the cre­ation of one of the most renowned pop/​rock albums of all time – Pet Sounds’. Meld­ing the doo-wop and surf sound of their ear­li­er releas­es while emu­lat­ing Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound’ style and sliv­ers of exper­i­men­tal 60s psy­che­delia, Pet Sounds’ was a crit­i­cal dar­ling but a com­mer­cial fail­ure in the US upon its release in 1966.

Buck­ling under the accu­mu­lat­ed pres­sure, Wil­son gives way to an unwieldy and dis­parate web of tan­gled hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry audi­al coun­ter­points. Jar­ring and unre­lent­ing, his exper­i­ments with LSD and the stress­es of an abu­sive child­hood leave him open and vul­ner­a­ble, easy prey for unscrupu­lous shrink Dr Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti).

Per­haps as much about the psy­cho­log­i­cal stran­gle­hold of abu­sive rela­tion­ships as the strug­gle of cre­ative endeav­our, Love & Mer­cy warns us to the dan­gers of per­ni­cious­ly moti­vat­ed syco­phants. The slow, insid­i­ous co-opt­ing of frag­ile peo­ple by a series of nor­mal­is­ing mis­deeds is some­thing we might all do well to pay heed to. Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal­ly trans­formed into a state of mal­leable placid­i­ty by the finance siphon­ing Landy, Cusack recounts, with dull ono­matopoe­ic thuds, the beat­ings he received from his father, trag­i­cal­ly leav­ing him all but deaf in one ear. In lat­er years, Landy looms large, hold­ing pow­er of attor­ney over Wil­son, entrap­ping him in an her­met­i­cal­ly sealed hor­ror, his every move­ment mon­i­tored, until Cusack attempts free­dom, pass­ing a note to Cadil­lac sales­women Melin­da Led­bet­ter (Eliz­a­beth Banks) that sim­ply reads: Lone­ly, Afraid, Frightened”.

Love & Mer­cy doesn’t pluck at the heart­strings, but Wilson’s sto­ry is at times ter­ri­fy­ing, and the sys­tem of abuse he expe­ri­enced is chill­ing. Instead, each musi­cal ele­ment, each chord, each sound is crisply pro­duced and played in uni­son to form the song of his life. It’s bit­ter­sweet and melan­cholic, always cap­ti­vat­ing, hold­ing the irrefutable truth of a pop lyric. Melin­da emerges through the haze of bells and whis­tles, a bassline note of hope ring­ing as a constant.

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