movies Love & Mercy ★★★★★
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he latest from director Bill Pohlad (Old Explorers) is that rare biopic that respects both its subject and its audience. Love & Mercy is the most insightful portrait of an artist and his process I’ve ever seen on screen. It presents an astonishing amount of information about not only Brian Wilson’s complicated, chaotic life but the equally complex workings of his mind, and it trusts the viewer to keep up. It’s a privilege to watch. The structure is strange yet somehow perfect. Screenwriters Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner fashion a portrait of the 72-year-old musician’s life by focusing on just two chapters and roughing in the rest. The formative years of the Beach Boys, for example, are sketched with a montage of grainy TV performances, a flash of concert footage and a scene on a plane in which the young Wilson (Paul Dano) suffers a panic attack. That incident led to his staying behind and experimenting in the studio while the band toured. The film’s first chapter, set in the 1960s, chronicles the recording of Pet Sounds, an album that broke away from the group’s surf-rock sound, sold poorly, and is regarded today as a milestone on the order of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Pohlad gets on celluloid something few filmmakers have captured before: a credible suggestion of the creative act. Dano is fantastic as Wilson at the peak of his powers — hearing musical fragments, angelic harmonies and visionary arrangements in his head and then working painstakingly with session players to replicate them on tape. The director receives invaluable aid from Trent Reznor associate Atticus Ross, who crafted stunning sonic collages to simulate the torrent of good vibrations and bad memories flooding the artist’s consciousness during this period. Here’s what I mean by respecting the viewer: Mixed into this soundtrack is a snippet of dialogue — “I’m a genius, too!” — that just happens to have been once barked at Wilson by his abusive father (played by Bill Camp). The exchange itself isn’t shown in the film. Its creators trust the audience to recognize the words or else surmise their significance. The second chapter takes place in the ’80s. In a Lynchian twist, the middle-age Wilson is portrayed by John Cusack, who looks nothing like the musician yet capably communicates the extent to which he’s broken. A virtual prisoner of Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), an egomaniac appointed to
LIFE OF BRIAN Dano delivers an inspired performance as the Beach Boy at the peak of his powers during the ’60s.
act as his therapist and guardian, the former Beach Boy is overmedicated and under constant surveillance. One day Wilson buys a car from Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), who connects with him instantly and gradually discovers that Landy is taking advantage of his famous patient. No spoiler alert necessary: Ledbetter frees the man she loves from his clutches and pretty much singlehandedly puts Brian Wilson back together. He may be the film’s subject, but Ledbetter is its hero. She’s also been Mrs. Wilson since 1995. These chapters offer a powerful beforeand-after portrait of one of music’s most significant and least understood giants. We’re
SEVENDAYSVT.COM 06.17.15-06.24.15 SEVEN DAYS 76 MOVIES
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OPEN WIDE Hairless apes are no match for the de-extincted dinos in Trevorrow’s blockbuster sequel.
give us a pterodactyl’s-eye view, even cynics will feel the exhilaration. Jurassic World is set 22 years after the original, plenty of time for the InGen company to forget the troublesome carnage on Isla Nublar and build a new park around the ruins of the old. But that park, we learn as we follow operations manager Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), has fallen victim to its own success: Consumers no longer see the “‘wow’ factor” of dinosaurs. The solution: Create a bigger, toothier genetic hybrid to scare the public silly. We don’t need a chaos theorist to tell us how that will end up. (And you don’t need a
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REVIEWS
Jurassic World ★★★ urassic World should have been told from the dinosaurs’ point of view. I (sort of ) kid, but consider the two most complex and intriguing characters in this belated sequel to Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park series. One is a genetically engineered intelligent sociopath raised in isolation; the other, a skilled team player torn between her loyalties to her adopted leader and to her species. Both are man-eating reptiles made of digital magic, and both seem to have fuller character arcs than any of the people who try to exploit them do. In short, this film could have used a Rise of the Planet of the Apes treatment. As it happens, the writers of Rise, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, share script credit on Jurassic World with Derek Connolly and director Colin Trevorrow. And, like the 1993 original, this film distinguishes itself from a cheesy monster movie by acknowledging that people who resurrect a magnificent species from its DNA only to turn it into a theme-park attraction probably deserve the nastiness that follows. Spielberg took care to balance that nastiness with his trademark sense of wonder. Trevorrow follows the same formula, and viewers who primarily want to see a functioning, believable dinosaur theme park will be richly satisfied. When the camera takes a soaring flight out a hotel room window to
accustomed to seeing stories like this end in tragedy. (Wilson did a lot of heroin during those years, locked in his bedroom.) However, unlike the recent Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck or the upcoming Winehouse documentary, Amy, Love & Mercy has a profoundly happy ending. Be sure to stay for the credits and see Wilson perform the touching title song written for his 1988 solo album. He came out the other side with his talent intact, so you never know — he might have a few more like that in him. Wouldn’t it be nice?
critic to tell you that the discussion is a nod to the dilemma of making this sequel for a jaded 2015 audience.) As in all fables where man messes with nature, nature will stomp people and their petty profit motives flat. If only the people in this movie didn’t so often seem to be begging for stomping. While Jurassic Park’s characters were far from complex, the heroes were capable; even the kids had distinctive quirks and survival skills. In Jurassic World, Claire’s two nephews — a moppet (Ty Simpkins) and his teenage brother (Nick Robinson) — seem to exist mainly to make uptight Claire feel guilty about not having her own family. Granted,
all three characters are also proficient in the running and screaming department. Chris Pratt is likable as the only soul in the park with genuine emergency-preparedness, a retired army man who’s been training the velociraptors like toothier dogs. But his chemistry with those clever beasts far outweighs his chemistry with Howard. While computer-generated monsters long ago lost their “wow,” Jurassic Park remains a classic because Spielberg leaned just as heavily on the “‘boo’ factor,” concealing the terrifying giants and then gradually, artfully revealing them. Trevorrow gets some early mileage out of similar suspense devices, but once the film settles into an action groove, fear and wonder dissipate. With the human characters too cartoonish to care about, it’s just an entertaining monster fight. And, as any Godzilla series fan knows, it is entertaining to watch giant reptiles throw down with blatant disregard for hordes of screaming and running Homo sapiens. Jurassic World has thrills, scares, a finger-shaking lesson on human hubris and a resounding affirmation of family values — just like its predecessor. What it lacks is the only perspective that might still have a genuine power to freak us out — the monster’s. MARGO T HARRI S O N