Film review: Love & Mercy

Dir: Bill Pohlad

With: John Cusack, Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks

Runtime: 121 minutes

THIS look at the life of Brian Wilson starts in blinding sunshine of the type Glasgow sees with the regularity of Halley's comet. Carrying a surfboard like an umbrella for shade, the five Beach Boys look like poster children for not just Sixties America but boy bands in general. There they are, larking around, riding the crest of a pop cultural wave. How did Wilson, this bright young thing, come to be such a deeply troubled man?

In answering that question, Bill Pohlad's meandering but thoroughly entertaining drama rejects a straight course between two points. The screenplay, after all, is by Oren Moverman, whose portrait of Bob Dylan enlisted an entire band of actors, including Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger, to sum up the greatness of His Bobness.

Here, Pohlad and Moverman confine themselves to just two actors - Paul Dano playing the younger Wilson, and John Cusack the older. Even so, you may feel that is still one Brian W two many. While the approach brings home the transformation in Wilson, it also makes for a film that is sprawling and overlong. Even though we spend two hours in the man's company it still feels, frustratingly, as though only a part of the story has been told.

Pohlad assumes some degree of prior knowledge, quickly moving from the Wilson who has already achieved fame in his youth to the lost soul of the Eighties who wanders into a luxury car showroom where he meets a saleswoman, Melinda Ledbetter (the always fabulous Elizabeth Banks). Ledbetter cannot work out why this man is minded as if he was a child,and of particular concern is a therapist, Dr Landy (Paul Giamatti), who seems to be with him 24/7. But a connection has been made between Ledbetter and Wilson, one that Landy is at first keen to encourage but then frowns upon as his influence begins to lessen.

As Pohlad cuts back to the Sixties we see that there was an earlier, equally domineering figure in Wilson's life in the scowling form of his father, the band's manager. The story explores this relationship, plus the increasing gulf between those Beach Boys who wanted to carry on doing more of the same and Wilson, who always wanted to push the envelope to tearing point. Between all this and what is going on in the Eighties, there are several motorways full of emotional traffic whizzing by in Pohlad's film. At certain junctions he lingers far longer than is necessary to get the point. Wilson, though a singular force, needed people. Most of all, he needed music.

Love & Mercy is at its best when it cuts through the white noise of Wilson's relationships and arrives at his cool, clear brilliance. Not a lot of time is wasted on the earlier, poppy material, with Pohlad concentrating rightly on the more complex compositions, and the creation of Pet Sounds in particular. While some of the cues to the songs border on the outrageously cheesy (a conversation about a dog and how they pick up vibrations between people leads to... you've guessed it), the scenes in the studio, with Wilson pouring blood, sweat and tears into getting the sound just right, show the inspiration/perspiration mix of genius at work. Pohlad also has something of an obsession with God Only Knows. Since it is one of the most beautiful love songs in pop, that was absolutely fine by this viewer

Given the quality of the music and the performances (with Dano just edging it over Cusack, largely because he has more of a transformation to portray), one can easily forgive the narrative sprawl. Even more of a treat is seeing Wilson at the end, performing the title track. At long last, the king of harmonies looks at one with himself.