His tics and mannerisms are typically and recognisably Cusack-ish, though he interestingly portrays a man who has only notionally got his act together, having lost weight and recommenced work, but presenting a waxy, doughy, tormented face to the world. Photograph: Francois DuhamelĬusack is marginally less good as Brian.
John Cusack as the older Brian Wilson and Elizabeth Banks as Melinda Ledbetter. This is the woman who is to rescue Wilson. Wilson comes into a Cadillac dealership one afternoon and falls in love with the woman selling him a car – Melinda Ledbetter, a smart, controlled performance from Elizabeth Banks. John Cusack plays the later Wilson, an unhappy, zombiefied and sedated man under the thumb of his controlling manager, Dr Eugene Landy, played – perhaps a little by the villain rulebook – by Paul Giamatti. A wild man trapped in the body of a male frump. He finds new dimensions to his genius for choral harmony: Brian is his own George Martin, but the band do not support him and loneliness, drug use and mental instability take their toll.ĭano is brilliant as Wilson, a career-best for him: his deceptively blank, bland, open face and disconcertingly quiet speaking voice are put to great use, sympathetically recreating Wilson’s gentleness, persistence and suppressed agony – his moon-like features framed by a pudding-bowl haircut that grew out, not into wild hippyish tresses, but an unflattering mop. He develops bold new orchestrations and arrangements, new sound textures of an analogue era that to the modern taste might sound more like inspired folk or world-music creations. Wilson is then liberated, like so many of his musical generation, by refusing to play live and instead finding solace in the recording studio. Wilson is portrayed by Paul Dano and John Cusack, past and future Brians of the 60s and 80s, respectively descending into and emerging from mental breakdown either side of the great triumph-cum-disaster of Pet Sounds, that critically adored commercial disaster.ĭano is the puppyishly eager and square-looking younger Brian shown with the rest of the band in a witty Super-8-style sketch of the Beach Boys’ early years over the opening credits.
#MERCY SOUND RECORDING STUDIOS MOVIE#
The movie faces off two different Brians, played by two different actors: rather in the way Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There (2007) – co-written by Moverman – had a string of different people to play Bob Dylan.
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