'Love & Mercy’ defies expectations, transcends the biopic genre

At first, it seems that something has gone wrong with the film. We see the young Brian Wilson (Paul Dano) talking, and the screen goes blank. In these opening seconds of "Love & Mercy," we're jolted out of the usual and must ask ourselves what we're seeing -- a malfunction of some kind or part of the movie? Thus begins a film that defies expectations and keeps an audience unsettled in the best way.

The term for this kind of movie is biopic, but "Love & Mercy" is so unlike conventional biopics that it makes even good ones, like "Walk the Line" or "Ray," seem obvious, routine and corny. "Love & Mercy" is matter-of-fact where other films are dramatic, and unsparing and harsh where other films are sentimental. It's as if it were made by people who never saw a popular movie about a musician -- and what a lucky thing they didn't, because they've ended up making something much better, a great movie about art.

"Love & Mercy" captures with striking immediacy the unbound power of the artist in his element. The same guy that can be fumbling for coherence, who seems regressed, unfocused, vague and shaky in any other environment, becomes an executive archangel in his rightful sky -- telling the cellists to attack their instruments like drums, incorporating the sound of dogs and random chat into the background of a song. In the recording studio, Wilson knows what he hears and what he's aiming for, and everywhere else he's all but lost.

The movie has a mythic intensity on a story level, a tale of rebirth and the breaking of a dark enchantment. In Wilson's case, the dark enchantment begins with the family itself and a monstrous father, who was cruel and violent, professionally undermining and manipulative. There are no pulled punches here on Dad's account. Murry Wilson makes Joe Jackson look like Mr. Rogers.

The toxic family dynamic is not escaped for years, because later Wilson re-enacts it. After drugs and some kind of latent mental disorder leads to his fragmentation and incapacity, Wilson allows himself to fall into the clutches of another malignant father figure, a terrifying therapist who keeps him prisoner and names himself his beneficiary. It's no accident that director Bill Pohlad casts as the father (Bill Camp) and the therapist (Paul Giamatti) two actors who resemble each other. In real life, Murry Wilson and Dr. Eugene Landy did not look alike, but this way, the subliminal point is made.

Brian Wilson is played by two actors in "Love & Mercy." Dano plays Wilson in his younger years, his creative peak with the Beach Boys in the mid-1960s. Dano's ability to integrate the poles of Wilson's behavior -- his supreme functionality as an artist and his hopelessness elsewhere--indicates an actor of singular constructive ability, in addition to an instinctive gift. His is a completely confident rendering of a completely insecure person. It's worth noting that "Love & Mercy" gets one thing right that most movie's get wrong: The great artist isn't tormented in the creation of art. That's often the joy and the abandon. The torment is everything else.

John Cusack plays the middle-aged Brian Wilson, under the thumb of his therapist, and it's Cusack's challenge to make this man, who is little better than a dependent child, into an appealing person, someone not pathetic. He does this by giving him the aura of a completely authentic being. His inability to protect himself becomes just part of his sensitivity, what makes him a creative person.

John Cusack and Elizabeth Banks in "Love & Mercy."(Francois Duhamel / Roadside Attractions)

Because Cusack is able to give Wilson a kind of manhood, despite his reduced circumstances, Elizabeth Banks is able to play Melinda, the woman who comes into his life, as more than a nice lady who likes helpless men. She gives us a way to see Wilson, as someone whose gift is part of a whole package, most of which is no blessing.

"Love & Mercy" is not the kind of movie one expects to see made during its subject's life. It's too honest and uncompromising, and though Wilson is sympathetic throughout, it shows him in an unflattering light. People often say they've made peace with the past, but that's easier said than done. But that this film exists at all is strong evidence that this might actually be true in Wilson's case.

If that's so, he deserves it.

Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicle's movie critic.