{"id":17271,"date":"2015-11-24T21:39:53","date_gmt":"2015-11-25T02:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=17271"},"modified":"2015-11-24T21:39:53","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T02:39:53","slug":"love-mercy-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/24\/love-mercy-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Love & Mercy (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"love-mercy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Music bio pics are rarely masterpieces, and while \u201cLove & Mercy\u201d is itself a fine movie, it\u2019s not the entry in to the long library in the sub-genre that\u2019s changed my mind about music bio pics just yet. Much like previous films about musical geniuses, the film gets lost in a miasma of pit falls, including the inability to balance the story of the musician and the story of the man himself. So we\u2019re thrust back and forth in to what ends as a flawed, but above average tale about mental illness, and the creation of art. \u201cLove & Mercy\u201d takes the concept of the bio pic above the norm, focusing on Brian Wilson, the founder of the Beach Boys through two stages of his life. One as a young man, and through his perils as a middle aged man. In both stages he\u2019s enduring the horrors of mental illness and is systematically being victimized by someone in his life that he finds incapable of escaping.<\/p>\n

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\u201cLove & Mercy\u201d pictures Wilson as someone manipulated and exploited for his musical gift, and given a life as a mule for easy cash by folks that claimed to love and appreciate him. Perhaps the most compelling footage involves Wilson\u2019s efforts to create \u201cPet Sounds,\u201d and how he envisioned it as the perfect album after being pressured to compete with the Beatles. The idea behind Pet Sounds is a grueling one, as only a seed of doubt is planted in Wilson\u2019s head, which bring him and his fellow band mates in to a torturous creative process that Brian has difficulty accomplishing. He is at most times a perfectionist hell bent on creating incredible music, but he is also doing battle with his mental illness, which refuses to relieve the pressure of providing his band mates with the best music he can muster up. There is even an aggravating sequence where in Wilson tries to train a group of cellists to produce the proper chords for \u201cGood Vibrations\u201d he inevitably sparks a temper fueled outburst by Mike Love.<\/p>\n

Paul Dano\u2019s performance as young Wilson is absolutely amazing and worthy of an award, mainly because he perfectly exemplifies the ups and downs of mental illness that only torments him the further he\u2019s victimized by his abusive father. Wilson\u2019s passionate and endless sessions to create music for \u201cPet Sounds\u201d are mind blowing and Pohlad depicts the recording room as something of a metaphorical sanitarium and sanctuary where Wilson is serene among the padded walls, and drives everyone to the brink of madness by trying to cure his own restlessness. Pohlad depicts the recording sessions as surreal with unusual wide shots and pans that depict Wilson\u2019s own uncomfortable madness. John Cusack is also incredible as the increasingly vulnerable Wilson who is surrounded by ghouls anxiously trying to pick off his success and wealth, to the point where he pretends to buy a car just to evade their ever intrusive presences.<\/p>\n

As an older Wilson, Cusack beautifully portrays a victim who is stuck in his world with no idea how to escape. As time goes on he\u2019s not even sure he has the strength to. His bond with Melinda Ledbetter (a strong turn by Elizabeth Banks) is his only means of escape, as she finds immense love for Wilson and his painful life, and makes it her mission to help him break from the clutches of Giamatti\u2019s Eugene Landy and his incredibly terrifying influence. As a picture of mental illness, director Bill Pohlad\u2019s film aces the horrors of enduring the disease, and how it can constantly stifle both romantic and personal relationships. It may not perfect the formula of balancing the picture of genius and the artist\u2019s personal life, but it succeeds as a grueling and emotional tale of a mentally ill man held hostage, and inevitably rescued by the love of his life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Music bio pics are rarely masterpieces, and while \u201cLove & Mercy\u201d is itself a fine movie, it\u2019s not the entry in to the long library in the sub-genre that\u2019s changed my mind about music bio pics just yet. Much like previous films about musical geniuses, the film gets lost in a miasma of pit falls, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,138,209,302,590,698,766,874],"class_list":["post-17271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-adaptation","tag-biography","tag-classic-rock","tag-drama","tag-l","tag-music","tag-performance","tag-romance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17273,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17271\/revisions\/17273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}