![]() ![]() But there are moments when I was philistine enough to wonder if the second half couldn’t simply have been played by Dano as well. The two-actor approach is a shrewd way of conveying the dislocation and disconnection suffered by Wilson and by those who knew and worked with him: many forced out of his life by fate or professional duplicity. This is a picture of someone who has become alienated from his own talent: the creativity and expression have gone, leaving him only with the sadness and the overwork and the oppressive claustrophobia – for which the studio is a horribly potent image: the musician working in airless vacuum while the controllers sit noiselessly behind glass. It is all a high-functioning delusion, created by a drug cocktail. His tics and mannerisms are typically and recognisably Cusack-ish, though he interestingly portrays a man who has only notionally got his act together, having lost weight and recommenced work, but presenting a waxy, doughy, tormented face to the world. Photograph: Francois DuhamelĬusack is marginally less good as Brian. John Cusack as the older Brian Wilson and Elizabeth Banks as Melinda Ledbetter. ![]() This is the woman who is to rescue Wilson. Wilson comes into a Cadillac dealership one afternoon and falls in love with the woman selling him a car – Melinda Ledbetter, a smart, controlled performance from Elizabeth Banks. John Cusack plays the later Wilson, an unhappy, zombiefied and sedated man under the thumb of his controlling manager, Dr Eugene Landy, played – perhaps a little by the villain rulebook – by Paul Giamatti. A wild man trapped in the body of a male frump. ![]() He finds new dimensions to his genius for choral harmony: Brian is his own George Martin, but the band do not support him and loneliness, drug use and mental instability take their toll.ĭano is brilliant as Wilson, a career-best for him: his deceptively blank, bland, open face and disconcertingly quiet speaking voice are put to great use, sympathetically recreating Wilson’s gentleness, persistence and suppressed agony – his moon-like features framed by a pudding-bowl haircut that grew out, not into wild hippyish tresses, but an unflattering mop. He develops bold new orchestrations and arrangements, new sound textures of an analogue era that to the modern taste might sound more like inspired folk or world-music creations. Wilson is then liberated, like so many of his musical generation, by refusing to play live and instead finding solace in the recording studio. Wilson is portrayed by Paul Dano and John Cusack, past and future Brians of the 60s and 80s, respectively descending into and emerging from mental breakdown either side of the great triumph-cum-disaster of Pet Sounds, that critically adored commercial disaster.ĭano is the puppyishly eager and square-looking younger Brian shown with the rest of the band in a witty Super-8-style sketch of the Beach Boys’ early years over the opening credits. Please contact Admissions at 1. or for more information about applying to the program and uploading portfolio materials.The movie faces off two different Brians, played by two different actors: rather in the way Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There (2007) – co-written by Moverman – had a string of different people to play Bob Dylan. The materials are used to demonstrate that prospective students in the program will be comfortable using software and hardware tools to create recordings and have a basic level of musicianship so they can apply what they learn about music theory and production to their own projects. The program accepts students with all levels of musical skill and interests. Please note: These portfolio items are not audition materials.
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