Love & Mercy

I once asked Brian Wilson, “What makes you laugh?” “Arguments,” he said. “Whenever I hear an argument, I laugh.” In Love & Mercy, there are plenty of disputes, among his fellow Beach Boys and between Brian and his abusive, dismissive father. There was no laughing for Wilson, a genius tormented by sounds in his head, some of which he parlayed into great music. Love & Mercy tells Wilson’s story in—to use ancient recording jargon—two tracks. We see the band in the early to mid-‘60s, riding surf music onto the charts until a creatively restless Wilson (a convincing Paul Dano), pushed by perceived rivals, including the Beatles, and abetted by drugs, turns to session players and engineers to soar beyond pop music, upsetting displaced bandmates. They just want the hits to keep on coming. Brian is driven into isolation. That story crisscrosses neatly with Wilson in the ‘80s. Portrayed by John Cusack, he’s a shocked shell of a man, self-described as “lonely scared frightened,” and living under the supervision of a tyrannical therapist (Paul Giamatti). He meets Melinda (Elizabeth Banks), a Cadillac dealer—and a grown-up California girl—who helps put him on the road back, to what Brian’s song from 1988 wishes everyone: love and mercy. —Ben Fong-Torres