Synopsis
In the late 1960s, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson stops touring, produces "Pet Sounds" and begins to lose his grip on reality. By the 1980s, under the sway of a controlling therapist, he finds a savior in Melinda Ledbetter.
Votre Filmothèque
Cast
- Paul DanoBrian Wilson 1960s
- John CusackBrian Wilson 1980s
- Elizabeth BanksMelinda Ledbetter
- Paul GiamattiDr. Eugene Landy
- Jake AbelMike Love
- Kenny WormaldDennis Wilson
- Brett DavernCarl Wilson
- Graham RogersAl Jardine
- Erin DarkeMarilyn Wilson
- Bill CampMurry Wilson
Recommandations
- 100
Hitfix
In essence, we get to study Brian's break with sanity and his eventual healing, but by keeping the focus tight on these two moments, the film becomes emotionally exhilarating. - 90
Variety
A wonderfully innervating cure for the common musical biopic, Bill Pohlad’s Love & Mercy vibrantly illuminates two major breakthroughs — one artistic, one personal — in the life of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson. - 83
IndieWire
Love & Mercy is an engrossing portrait of Wilson's specific artistic inclinations, which draw from no real precedent. - 83
The Playlist
Love & Mercy isn't a standard celebration nor a traditional music biopic. Instead, it's a survival story. - 80
The Guardian
It’s creative and experimental in just the right spirit, though with an asymmetric flaw. The film is a kind of diptych in which one of the panels is more fully achieved than the other. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
A deeply satisfying pop biopic whose subject's bifurcated creative life lends itself to an unconventional structure. - 80
Time Out
Wilson, a pop savant, was chasing some kind of dragon, and as the movie toggles years forward to the scared, overmedicated Wilson of the 1980s (John Cusack, absorbingly strange in the tougher part), you sense that the dragon bit back. - 70
The New Yorker
You feel both moved and exhausted by the distance that Wilson has to travel, musically and emotionally, before reaching the shore. That makes it, I guess, a happy ending. But then, as one of the Beach Boys remarks, on listening to “Pet Sounds,” even the happy songs are sad.
