Love and Mercy review: The life of Brian Wilson revisited

Upon hearing that John Cusack and Paul Dano were to play Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys enthusiast might reasonably have remarked that neither actor look much like that troubled genius and, further, that neither looks much like the other.

Indeed, Cusack is so different from the elder Wilson – cleaner of feature, less chewy in his diction – that the film-makers may as well, in imitation of Todd Haynes's I'm Not There, have placed Cate Blanchett in the role.

There is, however, a neat logic to the casting decisions. Bill Pohlad's picture (co-written by Oren Moverman, who also worked on I'm Not There) tells parallel stories set two decades apart.

In the mid-1960s, the young Wilson, psychologically sandblasted after years of chart success, retires from the touring band to devise the still-perplexing soundscapes of Pet Sounds. In the Reagan years, a middle-aged Brian, drugged into a walking coma, finds himself virtually imprisoned by celebrity quack Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti). They are two different men living two different lives.

It makes sense that Dano comes closer to an impersonation of Brian Wilson. The Beach Boy was drifting away from the stage and into private sonic experimentation, but we still retain a clear image of how he looked, dressed and interacted with the band. Indeed, Pohlad makes a point of recreating footage shot to promote the Beach Boys' version of Sloop John B. Dano is still, to some extent, playing a public figure. Cusack, who makes no attempt to replicate Wilson's unmistakable speaking voice, is allowed the freedom to knock together an original, semi-fictional personality.

The later “Brian Wilson” appears first as a pair of feet sticking out of a Cadillac in a showroom. It’s a lovely shot that gets at Wilson’s eccentricity and his old-school decency: he has adopted that posture because he doesn’t want to get sand in the car. The salesperson, Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), who doesn’t recognise the star, is charmed by his ingenuous eccentricity.

Archetypal Dr Feelgood
Then the odious Landy turns up to retake control of his human asset. Manipulative, chemically promiscuous, addicted to all kinds of bogus philosophies, this archetypal Dr Feelgood emerges from the fetid underbelly of the 1960s counterculture. The conservatives were wrong about that movement heralding the end of civilisation, but the chaos certainly unleashed its fair share of unlovely energies. Love and Mercy follows the patient, dogged Ledbetter – played with great warmth by a mildly shoulder-padded Banks – as she gets close to Wilson, discerns Landy's malign influence and sets about setting the faded star free.

The other strand contains the money shots. Dano is impressively frail and distracted. The scenes in the studio will delight Pet Sounds anoraks and inform those only semi- attached to the legend. The writers have particular fun portraying Mike Love (Jake Abel), constantly bored in his trademark cap, as the workmanlike pragmatist to Brian's unfocussed visionary. Bill Camp is demonic as the Wilson brothers' demented father.

1960s mythology
Shot in dreamy colours by Robert Yeoman, the picture cannot, alas, quite shake itself free from the overworked 1960s mythology. There is more than enough pedantic footnoting to The Lives of the Saints (Rock Legend Edition) than was necessary. We see the boys being kicked towards greater creativity after hearing The Beatles' Revolver. "I'm going to make the greatest album ever made," Brian actually says. Agnostics will tolerate these sections. But it's hard to imagine anyone actively hostile to mid-Sixties Beach Boys (there must be such oddballs) failing to cast eyes to heaven.

Still, Love and Mercy is imaginative enough to escape accusations of hagiography. Watch carefully for the final positioning of the word "End". At such moments, one can almost forgive the film-makers their refusal to properly address the theremin's place in Beach Boys lore. Almost . . .