The Cost Of “Good Vibrations”: John Cusack and Paul Dano Try To Untangle Brian Wilson.
Love & Mercy
Available on DVD and Blu-ray Sept. 15, 2015
loveandmercyfilm.com
I first heard about the eccentric, mentally unstable persona of Brian Wilson through an obscure interview (Nardwuar interviews Wayne Coyne) that touched on an even more obscure interview (Wayne Coyne interviews Brian Wilson) that never aired. Incredibly curious, I researched what Coyne described as an “unsettling,” “disturbing,” and “too weird” nature of that exchange and I was soon awakened to a long history of strange and fascinating encounters with the mysterious figure. As far as I knew, Wilson was just a former Beach Boy who got quieter and more esoteric on his solo records like many band-turned-solo acts do. Learning the lore behind Pet Sounds and SMiLE as well as the very story of Brian Wilson himself was eye-opening. Stories about “the price of genius” tend to skew a certain way with juicy details of megalomania or social quirks, but here was one about all-out mental illness. Artistic differences didn’t force Wilson to break up with his band, nor did disinterest cause him to go so long without releasing new material. He psychologically couldn’t handle his own ambitions.
Fortunately, there’s a ray of light to the tragedy, one that is clung to throughout the aptly-titled Love & Mercy. It stars John Cusack and Paul Dano as older and younger Brian Wilson, with Elizabeth Banks as Melinda Ledbetter, the woman who goes from his serendipitous acquaintance to his savior over the course of the film. Unlike some biopics that run chronologically with a familiar rise/peak/fall arc, this one works in parallel storylines, chronicling the deterioration of The Beach Boys circa Pet Sounds and the psychological entrapment of Wilson’s later life. This is a smart choice, since the former begins at a peak and the latter begins at a valley, thereby ensuring the tonal arc adheres to a more fall/valley/rise progression, which is refreshingly positive for the genre.
Cusack’s Brian Wilson is quieter and more skittish than Dano’s. It is soon explained that this is largely due to his doctor (Paul Giamatti, in a typically savage role), who rules his life and mind with psychological power plays and legal traps. When Wilson goes car-shopping (with his small posse of guards and medical advisors at close range), he happens upon salesperson Melinda. Her open-mindedness and endearment lead him to trust her with a scribbled-down cry for help. Eventually, they begin dating but the more she learns about his life, the more she becomes aware of just how much of a prison it has become. During these later-life scenes, Elizabeth Banks is the audience’s surrogate and lead character, so don’t be misled by her being third-billed.
With a studied portrayal of the real Brian Wilson’s physical presentation and verbal quirks, John Cusack seems like he’s been itching for a role like this, but it’s really Paul Dano that holds the character front and center. Dano is practically a perfect choice—some of his biggest roles have been psychologically tortured people that he plays with a high level of emotion. Here, those emotions aren’t as explosive, but when young Brian Wilson is taking abuse from his father or sparring with perfection, they are no less profound. Dano’s scenes also tend to have a lot of camera reveals, where his performance couples with his isolation in the frame before a context is revealed, which only emphasizes his internal tribulations.
Being a film largely about music, one would be remiss to not recognize the exceptional scoring from Atticus Ross, known for his work with Trent Reznor on the recent David Fincher films. You’d expect a soundtrack with as rich a library as the full Beach Boys catalogue and radio singles of past decades to leave little room for much original score. This is still technically true, but what the filmmakers and/or composer came up with is a stroke of genius. The score is an ambient soundscape comprised of manipulated fragments of Beach Boys songs, and, if I’m not mistaken, it only plays when Brian Wilson is on the screen. It feels cerebral, like we’re getting a glimpse of his mind, which has a constant fixation on music and sound. Even more telling is when this music becomes mixed with the external sound effects of the scene, conveying the disorientation and confusion Wilson experiences. The whole soundtrack could very well be seen as a character of its own.
This film is far more than just a Brian Wilson biopic made for a bunch of Beach Boys fans. It’s deeper than a tribute to a musical genius. It’s more perceptive than a well-rounded depiction of a person coping with insanity. It’s a lesson, an always timely reminder of the value of hope and redemption and a testament to the power of love and mercy.
Seeing this film, I finally got a sense of the true tragedy of Brian Wilson. To be fair, he burned a lot of bridges and rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, something that was also touched on in the film. He’s not innocent, exactly, but neither is anyone else. He’s just dealing with a different set of issues than the standard person. The tragedy is that for all the people that were in his life, it seems like no one was patient or understanding enough to stick it out with him, to help him stay afloat. Some miseducation at the time regarding mental health surely contributed to this, and I don’t doubt that he’s hard to work with, what with his non-sequiturs and an odd sort of ego that bounces back and forth between adamant humility and matter-of-fact boasting. I’m not even surprised the Wayne Coyne interview turned out to be unairable; it takes more than a love for Pet Sounds to gain the confidence of a notoriously timid figure who has spent most of his life out of the spotlight.
We can speculate what might have happened if Wilson’s SMiLE project hadn’t been abandoned decades ago, but I’m willing to bet that he was in a mental state that couldn’t have possibly seen it to completion, even if given unlimited resources. Sure, the album’s abandonment was a blow to the history of popular music, but what an even greater blow to lose its creator for years upon years. Sometimes I forget that near-perfect music comes from imperfect people, that there’s always a series of trials behind the scenes of any given work of art. Eccentric artists tend to be overshadowed by their eccentricities, and it promotes this idea that they aren’t relatable even though they’re humans just like the rest of us. You can remove all references to music and Brian Wilson and just tell the story about an unnamed person, and the film would retain its point. That’s because it’s a universal, timeless point, simple in concept but complex in practice—everyone needs love. Even if you can’t always see it.
