Love & Mercy
Overview
Bill Pohlad's LOVE & MERCY, a biopic of Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson, focuses on two distinct periods in the songwriter's life. One timeline follows Wilson (played as a younger man by Paul Dano) as he quits performing live in order to focus on the creation of the album PET SOUNDS, the single "Good Vibrations," and the eventually discarded album SMILE. During this period of intense work, Wilson's mental-health issues grow worse. The other section of the film features John Cusack as an older Wilson, as he attempts to escape the influence of a manipulative doctor (Paul Giamatti) who has become a totalitarian guru to him. Helping him in this endeavor is a car saleswoman named Melinda (Elizabeth Banks). LOVE & MERCY screened at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.
Awards:
Main Cast & Crew:
Bill Pohlad - Director
John Cusack
Elizabeth Banks
Paul Dano
Cheryl Strang
Don Foster
Jake Abel
Joanna Going
Brett Davern
Mark Linett
Gary Griffin
Details
- Format: DVD
- UPC: 031398224723
- Genre: DRAMA
- Rating: PG-13 (MPAA)
- Release Date: September 2015
Movie Reviews
Reviews:
"LOVE & MERCY draws its closest parallel to PET SOUNDS and SMILE, masterworks of composition and arrangement....Emotionally acute..." - 06/04/2015 A.V. Club
3 stars out of 4 -- "The result is a story that’s hair-raisingly watchable and frequently moving, regardless of what you believe you might already know of Wilson’s life." - 06/05/2015 RogerEbert.com
"In Bill Pohlad’s energizing, meticulously crafted, nearly pitch-perfect LOVE & MERCY, Paul Dano plays Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys as a young man at his creative height in the 1960s..." - 06/04/2015 Chicago Sun-Times
"The best, most involving sections of LOVE & MERCY take place in the 1960s and star Dano as a brilliant creator of pop music unlike any that had been heard before." - 06/04/2015 Los Angeles Times
"[A] smart, compassionate, refreshingly unconventional biopic directed by Bill Pohlad....It's a loving tribute to the Beach Boys and the man responsible for their distinctive sound, but it goes to deeper and stranger places than most movies of its kind..." - 06/05/2015 New York Times
"LOVE & MERCY is a cine-song of sun-glazed innocence and bruised experience, surfing between excruciating suffering and extraordinary redemption. It makes you cry, but sort of in a good way." - 07/06/2015 Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "This is the film Brian Wilson’s talent deserves: original, smart and affecting." - 07/03/2015 Empire
"Cast in Wilson’s image, LOVE & MERCY is a cine-song of sun-glazed innocence and bruised experience, surfing between excruciating suffering and extraordinary redemption." - 07/06/2015 Total Film
"Paul Dano and John Cusack bring the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson to life in Bill Pohlad's vibrant cure for the common musical biopic." - 09/08/2014 Variety
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