One of the absolute treasures of 2015

Rating: 10/10 (3 July 2015)

Let's start with some honesty, shall we? I came into this wanting it to be amazing. I think Brian Wilson is one of the few true American musical geniuses, a pop pioneer with an ageless sensibility. I wanted it to be amazing, but had my doubts. Dano and Cusack are odd casting to say the least and the biopic genre has all sorts of pitfalls baked right into its very formulas. Therefore, all the excitement leading into Love & Mercy was tempered by an equal if not greater dose of apprehension (this sort of confused cocktail will be even worse once The End of the Tour drops). Now, the film has been playing for well over a month and here I am just getting around to it.
Two hours later and any doubts or apprehension I had has been wiped away. Love & Mercy is the best possible screen version of Wilson's life story that I can imagine, even more than I had hoped for. But, more importantly, it's a remarkably well-made film-- lively, smart, and thoughtful. This is director Pohlad's first major film after making a career bankrolling films for the likes of Terrence Malick and Robert Altman. He distinguishes himself with his directorial work here, offering a series of perfectly judged scenes coalescing into an immensely satisfying portrait.
Nearly every gambit pays off. The hopscotch structure of Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner's delicately observed script energizes the film and lend it a harmonic musicality, complete with counterpoint and occasional dissonance.
John Cusack does his best work in a long time and Dano does his best work ever put to film. 1980s Wilson is both a quintessential Cusack hero-- a quirky romantic out of place in the world-- but with added layers, a softness and hesitance previously seldom used in his arsenal. What he lacks in immediate resemblance Cusack makes up for with physicality, creating a character by modulating his entire body. You can trace Wilson's arch by only paying attention to Cusack's eyes in each of his scenes. Back in the 1960s, Dano embodies Wilson's overflowing sonic imagination as well as his deep internal demons. I've felt Dano to be out of place in every other movie he's been in, but like Cusack he disappears here, falling into Brian's passionate drive. Together the two create a performance of absolute humanity.
Banks is given her meatiest role in a while and Giamatti returns to the screen with typical vigor. Both giving performances that provide complex and unexpected shading to characters whose outlines are familiar, but whose particulars ring true. The same goes for Bill Camp who gives Murray Wilson, the domineering father and erstwhile manager of The Beach Boys, rich psychological dimension with a bare minimum of screen time. His malignant presence lingers over the film just as it did over Brian's life.
Yet the sound is the real star here. Whether its the actual music of Wilson and the Beach Boys or the adapted and interweaved score-- AO Scott more accurately termed it a series of sonic collages-- by Atticus Ross, this film uses sound as well as anything this year.
The true achievement of Love & Mercy is the way it continually finds cinematic counterparts to the experience of listening to Wilson's best work. In that sense, it is as much a tribute to the act of listening to the artist's music as it is to the creation of that music. Indeed, this is one of the few films to ever make the act of hearing so vividly and gloriously cinematic, particularly when that act consists of a woman hearing a lonely, sad, frightened man's plaintive cries for help and responds with compassion.