I get royally sick of biopics, mostly because they often
fall into the trap of trying to summarize a person’s entire life by forcing it
into a three act structure, which neither serves to commemorate the lives they
portray, nor does it make biopics thematically or structurally distinct from
one another. That’s why when a film like
Love and Mercy comes along, I take
notice. Written by the same screenwriter
that wrote the excellent Bob Dylan film I’m
Not There, Love and Mercy is a
great example of how to use non-linear storytelling in order to capture some
key moments in a person’s life in order to tell a compelling story that isn’t
overburdened with the baggage of an entire life story.
Love and Mercy
chronicles two periods of singer/songwriter Brian Wilson’s life: the 1960s,
where he (played by Paul Dano) was the lead singer and composer for The Beach
Boys and worked on the later albums Pet
Sounds and the unfinished Smile;
and the 1980s, where an older Brian (John Cusack) struggles with mental illness
under the watchful eye of the manipulative Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), as
he courts a woman, Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), who ultimately acts as
his key to freedom.
The way the two stories are cut together makes for
incredibly interesting storytelling, as the two begin to converge around the
nature of Brian’s mental illness, with his younger self losing his grip on
reality as the older version struggles to find his way back towards it while his
so-called doctor pushes him down into suggestible catatonia. The film also makes a remarkable use of sound
to convey Brian’s mental faculties and processes, whether it is snippets of
unfinished songs that we hear racing through his head, or the overloud
cacophony of knives and forks scraping across plates as his anxiety reaches new
heights. It’s a fascinating look at how
mental illness could affect someone with such a deft musical ear.
If the film has one major failing, though, it is in the
consistency of the performances. Paul
Dano is suitably disturbed as the younger Brian, and Elizabeth Banks once again
proves how great of an actress she is by injecting Melinda with a sense of
humanity and strength that a lesser actress would have simply projected as
distress. However, John Cusack feels
like he doesn’t quite have a handle on any emotion other than sullen manic
depression, making his version of Brian feel relatively one-dimensional, and
Paul Giamatti really oversells his take on Dr. Landy, coming off as less than
subtly menacing and more of an obvious shrifter with a quick temper.
Overall, though, Love
and Mercy is a damn fine film that really captures the essence of the
tortured life that Brian Wilson lived.
It captures that essence, but does not feel the need to act as a
narrative summary of Wilson's Wikipedia article. More biopics need to trim their fat and focus
on the key moments that make their protagonists who they are, and find a story
to tell other than the usual rags-to-riches nonsense. Let’s hope that in the upcoming biopic-heavy awards
season that more films follow this model.
Though I’m not counting on it.
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