Hang On to Your Ego

Movies: Love & Mercy

When I was two years old, my parents would put Beach Boys albums on the turntable that sat in the living room of our house in small town Ohio and I would dance. I'm told my favorite BB song to dance to was "Help Me Rhonda" (and why wouldn't it be? That's, like, their best song). There's something about the Beach Boys that sticks, and I knew it even then.

Love & Mercy (directed by Bill Pohlad, who until now has spent his career as a producer) is the story of Brian Wilson, arguably the most influential of the Beach Boys who pushed the group beyond their surf n' girls comfort zone and into the psychedelia of the late 60's with "Pet Sounds", one of the BB's most critically acclaimed albums. Like most musical geniuses, Wilson suffered greatly--he struggled with psychosis and hearing voices for many years and took to heavy drug and alcohol use to cope, missing out of the formative years of his children. Wilson eventually became the long-term victim of Eugene Landy (played, not super convincingly, by Paul Giamatti--more on that below), an abusive psychologist who became Wilson's legal guardian and systematically stripped away his personhood through overmedication and manipulation.

Love & Mercy jumps back and forth in time. Paul Dano (amazing as always) plays the younger Wilson who clashes with his bandmates--particularly Mike Love--over the production of "Pet Sounds", which was a huge break from the Beach Boys' earlier sound. John Cusack (an interesting casting choice) plays Wilson in the late 80's while he is fully in the grip of Landy and is so overmedicated and cowed by Landy's personality and control that he appears childlike and completely unable to stand up for himself. Salvation comes in the form of a woman. Melinda Ledbetter (played by Elizabeth Banks with quiet strength), the woman who went on to become Wilson's second wife, meets Wilson when he shows up at the Cadillac dealership where she works to buy a car. Despite the fact that Wilson acts like a total weirdo, the two begin a tentative courtship and it's not long before Ledbetter clashes with Landy in the battle for Wilson's freedom.

As someone who is fascinated by gender and power dynamics, I found Love & Mercy to be very unique in its portrayal of Wilson as a man. Both Dano and Cusack bring a soft, gentle, and --not sure if this is the right term--feminine energy to Wilson. It's clear that Wilson spent his life being bossed, manipulated, and physically abused by men: his ruthless, horrible father who beat him; his bandmate Mike Love who argued with him every step of the way through the creation of "Pet Sounds"; and of course Landy, who would scream at Wilson for eating too much and made him change his will to leave money to Landy. During both the 60's and the 80's, women come to Wilson's rescue. Of his first wife, Marilyn, Wilson says "She saved my life" but doesn't elaborate. We can only assume that Marilyn provided emotional shelter from Wilson's asshole of a father. And the film shows how Ledbetter never gave up on Wilson, even as he told her there was "no way out" from under the thumb of Landy. I was really emotionally moved by Ledbetter's unwillingness to let Wilson, for all intents and purposes, die under the watch of Landy.

The film isn't perfect. I mentioned above that I didn't warm up to Giamatti as Landy. As much as I love Paul Giamatti--he is an amazing actor--he didn't disappear into the role. His very fake wig didn't help either. I could not get away from seeing Giamatti, not Landy, and I wish the director had cast someone less well known for the role. Cusack was an unusual casting choice as well, and the way he plays Wilson reminded me a little of Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump: a simple, childlike man. Perhaps Wilson truly was like that during those awful years.

Dano, however, is wonderful as the young Wilson. And the scenes set in the 60's are superior to the scenes set in the 80's, although both eras are essential to telling this story. The film takes modest artistic liberties, such as when young Wilson does LSD for the first time and lies in a field with flowers blooming all around him. But at the very end there are some choices the director made that I didn't care for, such as young Wilson standing over the bed of older Wilson and smiling down on him. It was a little too precious for me.

Overall, Love & Mercy will punch you in the heart. The story of Brian Wilson, a gentle, fragile genius, is one that deserves to be told and will surprise and fascinate lovers of the Beach Boys and even those who know very little about the Beach Boys and their place in musical history.

Grade: B+