Love & Mercy (12A)

Bill Pohlad

Last week I wrote about Amy, a fine documentary about a prodigiously gifted yet vulnerable woman undone by those closest to her. Hot on the heels comes another moving tale that makes one think that artists require some sort of protection agency.

Decades before Amy Winehouse came Brian Wilson, the genius behind the Beach Boys. Love & Mercy isn't a documentary, but its fictionalised account of Wilson's life has the ring of veracity about it. And like Amy, it offers a thrilling sense of its subject's creativity at its most sublime, as well as a warts-and-all account of his suffering.

Wilson was the inspiration behind The Beach Boys, writing and producing and adding his voice to the trademark harmonies of cheery songs about surfing, cars and girls that epitomised the 'California Sound' of the Sixties. Tensions with the band, including brothers Dennis and Carl and cousin Mike Love, increased as Wilson's musical ambition and visionary production methods threatened to disrupt their hit machine; then mental illness took hold and one of America's most important artists disappeared from view.

The film boldly eschews A-Z biopic for a criss-crossing narrative between two key moments in Wilson's life - with a different actor playing him in each: the recording of his masterpiece Pet Sounds in the mid-Sixties, and his meeting with future wife Melinda Ledbetter in the Eighties, when the car saleswoman attempted to save the helpless, over-medicated celebrity from virtual imprisonment by his psychotherapist.

For the earlier period, Paul Dano plays Wilson as a cherub touched by God, who admits that it "sometimes scares me" to think where his music comes from and in whom it's difficult to gauge where eccentricity ends and mental illness begins - though his discovery of LSD certainly tips the balance.

The highlight of this period is the sequence devoted to the recording of Pet Sounds, as Wilson creates his innovative soundscape with the help of legendary session musicians The Wrecking Crew. His childlike pleasure in their musical adventure, the excitement and mutual admiration ripple off the screen.

At the same time, director Bill Pohlad and his screenwriters lay the foundation for Wilson's subsequent problems, by showing the destructive presence of Wilson's abusive father and the pain of having Pet Sounds misunderstood by his family and fellow band members. "There's not one hit on this album," moans Love. "Even the happy songs are sad".

With John Cusack as the older Wilson, we see the shell of the man after years of substance abuse and reclusiveness, every moment of his life controlled by Dr Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), a seriously creepy guy whose care seems entirely self-serving. Enter Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), won over by the sweet, strange man who wants to buy a Cadillac from her, who will eventually turn his life around.

Best known as the entertaining airhead Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games, Banks shows a different side here with a watchful, appealing performance as the grounded civilian caught between twisted personalities. Opposite her, Cusack seems too mannered at times, though he does capture the sadness and defeat of a man who was already living inside his head when Landy slammed the door shut. Giamatti is positively frightening as the doctor who seems more mad than his patient.

Pohlad is best known as a producer, notably on 12 Years A Slave. In just his second feature as director he demonstrates a tight control of narrative and a great deal of visual flair, particularly when depicting the music-making moments in the Sixties. The result feels like a rediscovery of a man whose talent rivalled The Beatles.