LOVE & MERCY is based on the life of Brian Wilson, the composer-performer-musical genius who back in the early 1960s was instrumental in making the Beach Boys one of America’s most successful musical groups. However, LOVE & MERCY is a bit different from other biopics in that two actors play the central character. Paul Dano is cast as Wilson as a younger adult, while John Cusack plays him as an older adult.
LOVE & MERCY is not the first film to feature more than one actor playing the same real-life individual. Back in 2007, six actors-- female as well as male, black as well as white-- impersonated Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes’ I’M NOT THERE. So prior to seeing LOVE & MERCY, I asked myself: Will this new film be as ambitious and stimulating as I’M NOT THERE? Or will the casting be nothing more than a publicity stunt, a conversation-starter, a lure to somehow draw audiences into theaters?
Well, happily, LOVE & MERCY, directed by Bill Pohlad, is no gimmicky biopic. Far from it... The film puts forth the idea that, once upon a time, the Beach Boys were California-cutting edge. Their surfer music, which at the outset accompanies images of the bikini-clad girls of the era that are right out of a Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello beach party movie, evokes a simpler, happier, pre-Vietnam war era.
On the surface, Brian Wilson fits right into this 1960s zeitgeist, but there is much more at work here. This involves the personality and plight of Brian Wilson. On one level, he does not wish to merely duplicate the sounds that won the Beach Boys their early success. He wants to explore his creativity, to fashion a new and different kind of music, and this puts him at odds with some of those around him. Also, the Brian Wilson depicted in LOVE & MERCY is a deeply sensitive man, a gentle soul who is used and abused by the two men who are at the center of his being. The first is his cruel, hard-nosed father. The second is a shifty, manipulative therapist, played by Paul Giamatti, who diagnoses Brian as a “paranoid schizophrenic.”
All of this combines to almost-- and the emphasis here is on “almost”-- destroy Brian Wilson. At first, he appears to be merely disconnected from those around him. But in fact, he becomes increasingly adrift internally. He is haunted by demons, and he is “lonely, scared, frightened.” Also, at one point Brian meets Melinda Ledbetter, played by Elizabeth Banks, a lovely young woman, and the two share a mutual attraction. However, how will Melinda react when she comes face-to-face with the full force of Brian’s terrors?
One of the points that is stressed in LOVE & MERCY is that, in our culture, it is ever-so-easy to idolize and idealize celebrities. Yet we know little if anything about who they really are. Plus, how many wannabe creative artists who have genuine talent ever get to display that talent for all the world to see and savor? In this regard, Brian Wilson is one of the lucky ones. He is one who does win fame: a great fame. But he is psychologically damaged. He lacks the inner strength and determination to push away those who abuse him. And he suffers deeply for it.
And as for the casting of Cusack and Dano... In essence, the two actors offer two sides of Brian Wilson: the bold, innovative artist; and the gentle soul who is unable to stick up for himself and thus falls victim to the ruthlessness of his father and his therapist. Indeed, LOVE & MERCY is an engrossing, deeply moving film about a brilliant genius and his demons, how he is exploited by some, and how he is loved by others.
Rob Edelman teaches film history at the University at Albany. He has written several books on film and television, and is an associate editor of Leonard Maltin’s Movie and Video Guide.
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