Join Mr. Duane for “Animals in the Doghouse” a story hour series for 3-5 year-olds on Thursdays this fall. Call the library at (574) 267-6011 to register.

By MISSY CHAPMAN
Cataloging Supervisor, Warsaw Community Public Library

If you’re a fan of great movies and the Beach Boys, then the film “Love & Mercy” is for you. It’s a fascinating, yet tragic, biopic about the Beach Boy’s Brian Wilson. Typically biopics are boring “best of” montages that never truly go anywhere. This one is completely different. It is a thoughtful movie about the connection between lunacy and genius.

Instead of having one actor portray Wilson, who fought a long battle with drug addiction and mental illness, director Bill Pohlad gives us two exceptional actors’ performances. There’s Paul Dano, who plays the younger Wilson at the height of his career in the 1960s, and John Cusack who plays the middle aged Wilson, of the 1980’s who’s fighting against the pill-induced haze created by his therapist Eugene Landy.

While “Love & Mercy” doesn’t claim to solve the mystery of Brian Wilson, it succeeds beyond all expectation in making you hear where he was coming from.

Casting two such different actors to play the same character at different stages of his life – the one before a major physical and mental cataclysm, the one after – helps to underline that character’s significant transformation and the obstacles in his way as he tries to recover.

Paul Giamatti, who plays Landy, is outstanding and many times terrifying in every second he is on screen, taking advantage of every moment to convey the doctor’s deranged obsession with Wilson’s every move and the move of every one that tries to stop him. Elizabeth Banks is admirable and heartwarming in her role as Melinda Ledbetter, the woman who helps Wilson in his struggles to free himself from Landy.

Some of the best scenes are in the studio during the creation of the quintessential songs in ‘Pet Sounds’, which is believed by many to be one of the best albums of all time, involving the viewer with the music through the breaking down and assembling of each sound and rhythmic beat. The studio is also the room where much of the 1960’s Brian Wilson seems to slip ever closer towards the madness we know he did slip into.

After watching “Love & Mercy” I’ve fallen in love with the Beach Boys all over again. “Love & Mercy” is phenomenal and truly gives off good vibrations.