Love & Mercy

A biography of Brian Wilson told from two separate periods, with two different actors playing him. In the 1960s, Wilson stays home while the Beach Boys tour and makes Pet Sounds. The best passages are in the studio: a barking dog, a bicycle bell, an odd tuning, the bewildered looks of the session players. The same scenes carry his father's violence and the beginning of the voices in his head. In the 1980s, Wilson is living under the total control of his therapist Eugene Landy, who decides his medication, his money, who he sees and what he says. He meets Melinda Ledbetter in a car showroom, and her intervention is what gets him out. Paul Dano plays the younger Wilson and John Cusack the older one, with Elizabeth Banks as Melinda and Paul Giamatti as Landy. Bill Pohlad directed. The two actors look nothing alike and the film does not hide it; the point is not the same man but two different states of him. A film that stands apart even for viewers tired of music biographies. For anyone who has never heard the Beach Boys, the studio sections may lose their meaning.