Withering Glance: Good vibrations meet California noir in 'Love & Mercy'

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

CP: Dear Mother of Lord, Rick: When has such sunny pop music arisen from so dark and tortured a psyche?

RN: I know. One of the many lessons that I took away from seeing the totally absorbing "Love & Mercy" was that "Fun, Fun, Fun" really wasn't, at least for Beach Boys savant Brian Wilson.

CP: You've got to hand it to Bill Pohlad, the Minneapolis director, for refusing to deliver anything close to a standard music biopic.

RN: Yeah, "The Doors," it's not. Thank goodness.

CP: I kept expecting more depictions of brilliantly crafted chart-topping songs — instead we got more spooky episodes of schizo–affective disorder.

RN: And brilliant period clothing. For the 1980s segments, costume designer Danny Glicker gave Elizabeth Banks a spot-on Sue-Ellen-Ewing-at-Southfork look, and Paul Giamatti's slimeball of a character appeared as if he haunted the clearance racks at Chess King.

RN: Screenwriters Oren Moverman and Michael Lerner gave Giamatti some spectacular — and cringe-inducing, at least to contemporary ears — Leo Buscaglia-speak. I loved it.

CP: I've admired Paul Dano's intensity as an actor since seeing him in the Oughties in "Little Miss Sunshine" and "There Will Be Blood." Did you like him as the young Brian Wilson?

RN: It's an Oscar-bait performance, whether he's throwing himself into the despair of Wilson's growing mental instability, or rivetingly illuminating his Mozart-like genius while recording "Good Vibrations."

CP: In those short-sleeved Ban-Lon sweaters and that Beatles haircut, Dano had the tougher of the two actors' jobs, IMHO, since he had to straddle "normalcy" and mental illness while trying to hold together a hit band and make the "Pet Sounds" concept album with the humble goal of outdoing "Rubber Soul."

RN: Dano has the pathos-dipped smile down cold, don't you think? He reminded me of Charlie Brown. He's also handed one of the movie's best lines, a zinger to one of his band members when they insist he return the group's sound to its Redondo roots. "Surfers don't even like our music," he said.

RN: Yes, a time in my life otherwise known as "graduate school." Is there a future music biopic you'd like to see put into production? The Pet Shop Boys, perhaps?

CP: Or could we just revive the Super-8 movies of you doing "My Fair Lady" on your high school prison tour? I could get those to Bill Pohlad, stat.

RN: All video of that burlesque version of "Up With People" has been destroyed. A tragedy for America.

E-mail: witheringglance@startribune.com