Paul Dano Soars, Elizabeth Banks Shines, John Cusack Stinks UP The Joint!

Rating: 4/10 (13 May 2016)

I've been listening to the Beach Boys for forty years, and I've read most of the books written about the band. LOVE & MERCY is a movie I'd dreamed of seeing for years, but it just didn't live up to my expectations.
Paul Dano is superb as the young Brian Wilson, a pure soul in a dirty, greedy world who just wants to make music. The half of the film where he makes the album Pet Sounds, and the song "Good Vibrations," is certainly worth watching. But there's nothing said that isn't self evident. Brian is a genius. Mike is a selfish jerk. Dennis and Carl are dweebs. Father Murray is a monster. All these characters are about an inch deep. The movie doesn't have the conflicts needed for drama, because it's already clear who the hero (or victim) is, and what's going to happen. The only thing that saves the Sixties scenes is the purity and simplicity of Paul Dano's performance. He owns Brian Wilson and makes every scene soar, in and out of the recording studio.
Unfortunately, in the Eighties section the older Brian Wilson is played by John Cusack. Cusack is wretchedly miscast and utterly at a loss with playing a character who was shy and fragile as a young man, and who is now practically paralyzed by drugs and mental disability. Cusack is often an effective actor, when he plays aggressive, strong-willed, Irish-American Midwestern bully-boy types, but he doesn't convey vulnerable, timid, or fragile emotions very well. His high speed chatter and ever-so-humble mumbling comes across as more of a creepy put on than a heartbreaking tragedy.
The problem is aggravated by the fact that Elizabeth Banks effortlessly outshines him in every scene, combining spunk, glamour, sex appeal, and enormous heart in a completely believable character. There is zero sexual chemistry between these two characters. She's completely authentic while he's mannered, artificial, and grating.
But beyond the poor performance of Cusack, LOVE & MERCY is sunk by its own ignorance of Brian Wilson's music. Mean old Murray sneers that "God Only Knows" sounds like a suicide note. So where is the Murray who "cried like a baby" (in Dennis Wilson's words) the first time he heard "Caroline, No?" I don't know about Murray, but something tells me the film makers never listened to "The Lonely Sea" on the SURFING USA album. Or "The Warmth of the Sun" on SHUT DOWN VOL. 2 Do your homework, people! The film makers don't care who Brian Wilson really was. They don't care that he was depressed from the beginning, even during his "fun" period.They just want an icon, in the most literal sense, an inanimate object or symbol for purity and victimization.
It's also painfully clear that all the Dr. Landy scenes are told strictly from second wife Melinda's point of view. The "rescue" scenes come across as unintentionally funny (or unintentionally creepy) precisely because the storytelling is so one-sided. Melinda's desire to get control of Brian is so obvious that she ends up looking just as callous and hypocritical as Dr. Landy. Elizabeth Banks is just brilliant enough to make you put up with it, but after the movie is over you feel like you've been had.
This is a very pretentious film, with a lot of "artistic" white noise meant to suggest the madness in Brian Wilson's head. There are also some bedroom shots where he sees his past and future self which are clearly a tribute to Stanley Kubrick's 2001. Yet oddly, as I watched the movie I kept thinking of another Kubrick film, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Because the way Brian Wilson keeps getting batted back and forth between Melinda and Dr. Landy really reminded me of Alex being "captured" by the state and then "rescued" by the radical conspirators. Except that when Kubrick told the story, he explored the ambiguities, and made the irony dark and chilling. LOVE & MERCY just sort of hopes you won't notice!