In 1966 Wilson, burnt out and struggling with the voices and music he’d heard in his head since childhood, decided to stay in California and work on new material while the rest of the band toured Japan. Eugene Landy (played by Paul Giamatti), appears and with the help of his bodyguard “persuades” him to get out of the car and leave the showroom. But not before Wilson slips Ledbetter a card that reads, “lonely, scared, frightened.” What follows is two hours of intense, heartbreaking and uplifting cinema as the story shifts between 1980’s Wilson and 1960’s Wilson (played by Paul Dano, below). After a couple of minutes, Wilson’s pyschotherapist, Dr. At first, she does not know who he is, and as they sit quietly together in a car, it becomes clear that Wilson is profoundly sad, quite confused, and above all a lost and gentle soul. Wilson (played in the 1980s scenes by John Cusack, below) is wandering around the showroom when he meets Melinda Ledbetter (played by Elizabeh Banks), an ex-model turned car saleswoman.
The film opens in a car showroom in the 1980’s. As a lifelong Beach Boys fan, I was aware, of course, of bandleader Brian Wilson’s creative genius and history of drug taking and mental health issues – but the extent to which these are intertwined and the horror of what Wilson went through mentally is mindblowing. The film in question was Brian Wilson biopic Love and Mercy, and within minutes I knew it was going to be one of the best films I’d ever seen. This week I went to the beautiful Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle’s historic independent filmhouse, for dinner and a movie with friends.
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