Love & Mercy is a very entertaining biopic of Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson, and hardly the screaming train wreck I expected when I heard that the legendary songwriter, producer, and arranger would be played by two different actors—Paul Dano during Wilson’s glory years in the mid-60s, ending in his complete mental and physical breakdown, and John Cusack during Wilson’s traumatic experience as the patient of bullying psychiatrist Eugene Landy in the early 90s, from whom he was rescued (or so the movie asserts) by Melinda Ledbetter, an LA car dealer who has become his second wife. Having two different adults play the same character at different points in his life has never worked for me, and screenwriters Owen Moverman (The Messenger, Rampart) and Michael A. Lerner heighten the contrast by interpolating the Dano and Cusack story lines. But then, Moverman’s first big success, I’m Not There (2007), split Bob Dylan into six different actors, so I guess this is sort of an improvement.
Less known is the Brian Wilson who spent a decade undergoing 24-hour therapy—effectively, house arrest—at the hands of Landy, who insinuated himself into Wilson’s life as a songwriting partner, a record producer, and a beneficiary of his will. A cornucopia of pharmaceuticals kept Wilson in a haze for much of this period, which may be why this part of the movie plays like “The Melinda Ledbetter Story” (with Elizabeth Banks in a typically fine performance). During this period Landy supervised the writing of Wilson’s 1991 autobiography Wouldn’t It Be Nice—which reads like “The Eugene Landy Story”—and Wilson later disowned the book. “Brian acknowledges that he can’t remember everything about his life and has relied upon certain preparations,” explained his cowriter, Todd Gold. Wilson is now working on a new autobiography, defiantly titled “I Am Brian Wilson.” But his life story has never been a nonfiction book. It’s more like a coloring book. v
Directed by Bill Pohlad
