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Love & Mercy:
Love and Mercy was one of my most anticipated movies of the summer. Critics gave it great reviews at the Toronto Film Festival, which carried over to a great 90% Rotten Tomatoes rating, one of only two musical biopics featuring Paul Giamatti as a handler to accomplish that feat this year. I'm a mild Beach Boys fan, having grown up on it from my huge Beach Boys fan father. Originally this movie was supposed to be about Brian Wilson's life from 3 eras: His music making peak in the late 60s, his bed-ridden period in the 70s, and his hellish life under therapist Eugene Landry in the late 80s. The director dropped the 70s part a bit before filming, thinking that it would clutter up a movie that was 2 hours anyways. I have to say that I disagree with this call. The viewer never gets to find out how Landry managed to become a legal guardian of Wilson, and his first wife, who first introduced the two, is never even mentioned. I did a lot of Wikipedia reading to contextualize the eras, and honestly it was more interesting than the movie. Love and Mercy is well made, but it's not especially interesting to watch.
By far the best thing going for it is Paul Dano's award worthy portrayal of 60s Brian Wilson. John Cusack is almost equally as good, but Dano gets the meatier role to play. Wilson is a fantastic artist who is slowly going insane from his drug use, and Dano's orchestration of the band is a delight to watch. He gets a version of Brian Wilson which I interpreted as flawed, although apparently most others disagree. Yes, Wilson could be seen as a hero for refusing to sell out to make an artistic statement, but at the same time he's alienating his family by essentially making a solo album. His controlling and demanding position in the band makes for a good parallel between hero and villain, which I would give a lot of credit for if it were intentional. Paul Giamatti is a very good actor, but the script thrusts a one dimensional bad guy in Landry at him. He is controlling and demanding over Brian Wilson's personal life, regulating who he has contact with and stalking him while administering an excessive amount of drugs. At no point does he have a single humane moment, so the audience isn't allowed to feel the slightest bit of sympathy towards him.
This could have been an amazing, 5 star movie, but it goes and commits the deadly sin of biopics. Wilson is treated like a misunderstood messiah, and all who oppose him are painted as evil to the Saturday morning cartoon degree. You can tell that it was not intentional to have Wilson appear similar to Landry because band member Mike Love is obviously supposed to be the villain of the 60s segments. He gets into spats with Wilson constantly, is seen as a sellout with no value of quality music, and wants the band to break away from Wilson. Love is both a poorly written villain (as the 5th billing, he gets very little to do) and poor at being a villain (am I not supposed to like the man that stands up for an egotistical and powerful figure micromanaging others in the name of work?).
The script is made up of a series of moments more than it makes up a story, and that's what makes this movie not a lot of fun, whether or not it was any good. The 60s and 80s have very little to do with each other, because other than Wilson no character appears in both. The 80s portions have their own self contained plot, with Wilson's future wife played by Elizabeth Banks trying to liberate Wilson from the control of Landry. The 60s follow the rise and fall of the Beach Boys as a band, which is barely covered because only 50 minutes of film take place there. There isn't much of an arc, the band likes him, Brian records Pet Sounds, and the band hates him. The actual dialogue is pretty good, in the sense that it gives the actors something good to work with.
The score here is fantastic, both the original composed score and the Beach Boys songs that cut throughout. Their early hits are montaged in the beginning, and the rest get played when it fits the narrative. And then, of course, the scenes that steal the whole show: the recording sessions. The actors do a lot of great singing themselves, the harmonies are beautiful, and the instrumentals are even better. Dano is frantically running around shouting corrections at his studio band, and the instrument and assorted animal noises come together brilliantly. It's probably the most realistic recording ever put on film. There's no way that I could do it justice with words, but the sessions of Good Vibrations justify the existence of the entire movie. As much as I liked the movie, I was just hoping that I would like it a little bit more, and my rating reflects that, not the filmmaking quality, which would be a strong 4/5. It falls into traps and cliches, but dances around them decently, and the good stuff is good enough to sit through the bad.
Love & Mercy:
Love and Mercy was one of my most anticipated movies of the summer. Critics gave it great reviews at the Toronto Film Festival, which carried over to a great 90% Rotten Tomatoes rating, one of only two musical biopics featuring Paul Giamatti as a handler to accomplish that feat this year. I'm a mild Beach Boys fan, having grown up on it from my huge Beach Boys fan father. Originally this movie was supposed to be about Brian Wilson's life from 3 eras: His music making peak in the late 60s, his bed-ridden period in the 70s, and his hellish life under therapist Eugene Landry in the late 80s. The director dropped the 70s part a bit before filming, thinking that it would clutter up a movie that was 2 hours anyways. I have to say that I disagree with this call. The viewer never gets to find out how Landry managed to become a legal guardian of Wilson, and his first wife, who first introduced the two, is never even mentioned. I did a lot of Wikipedia reading to contextualize the eras, and honestly it was more interesting than the movie. Love and Mercy is well made, but it's not especially interesting to watch.
By far the best thing going for it is Paul Dano's award worthy portrayal of 60s Brian Wilson. John Cusack is almost equally as good, but Dano gets the meatier role to play. Wilson is a fantastic artist who is slowly going insane from his drug use, and Dano's orchestration of the band is a delight to watch. He gets a version of Brian Wilson which I interpreted as flawed, although apparently most others disagree. Yes, Wilson could be seen as a hero for refusing to sell out to make an artistic statement, but at the same time he's alienating his family by essentially making a solo album. His controlling and demanding position in the band makes for a good parallel between hero and villain, which I would give a lot of credit for if it were intentional. Paul Giamatti is a very good actor, but the script thrusts a one dimensional bad guy in Landry at him. He is controlling and demanding over Brian Wilson's personal life, regulating who he has contact with and stalking him while administering an excessive amount of drugs. At no point does he have a single humane moment, so the audience isn't allowed to feel the slightest bit of sympathy towards him.
This could have been an amazing, 5 star movie, but it goes and commits the deadly sin of biopics. Wilson is treated like a misunderstood messiah, and all who oppose him are painted as evil to the Saturday morning cartoon degree. You can tell that it was not intentional to have Wilson appear similar to Landry because band member Mike Love is obviously supposed to be the villain of the 60s segments. He gets into spats with Wilson constantly, is seen as a sellout with no value of quality music, and wants the band to break away from Wilson. Love is both a poorly written villain (as the 5th billing, he gets very little to do) and poor at being a villain (am I not supposed to like the man that stands up for an egotistical and powerful figure micromanaging others in the name of work?).
The script is made up of a series of moments more than it makes up a story, and that's what makes this movie not a lot of fun, whether or not it was any good. The 60s and 80s have very little to do with each other, because other than Wilson no character appears in both. The 80s portions have their own self contained plot, with Wilson's future wife played by Elizabeth Banks trying to liberate Wilson from the control of Landry. The 60s follow the rise and fall of the Beach Boys as a band, which is barely covered because only 50 minutes of film take place there. There isn't much of an arc, the band likes him, Brian records Pet Sounds, and the band hates him. The actual dialogue is pretty good, in the sense that it gives the actors something good to work with.
The score here is fantastic, both the original composed score and the Beach Boys songs that cut throughout. Their early hits are montaged in the beginning, and the rest get played when it fits the narrative. And then, of course, the scenes that steal the whole show: the recording sessions. The actors do a lot of great singing themselves, the harmonies are beautiful, and the instrumentals are even better. Dano is frantically running around shouting corrections at his studio band, and the instrument and assorted animal noises come together brilliantly. It's probably the most realistic recording ever put on film. There's no way that I could do it justice with words, but the sessions of Good Vibrations justify the existence of the entire movie. As much as I liked the movie, I was just hoping that I would like it a little bit more, and my rating reflects that, not the filmmaking quality, which would be a strong 4/5. It falls into traps and cliches, but dances around them decently, and the good stuff is good enough to sit through the bad.