Biopics have long been a surefire ticket for filmmakers to
earn awards, recognition, and acclaim (or at least get themselves mentioned in
the award season conversation). It’s not hard to see why these types of films
are so popular: they naturally provide a sense of history and drama, and with
actors portraying an actual, real-life person, there’s a built-in barometer to
tell you exactly how good a job they’re doing. One only has to look at last
year’s crop of Oscar nominees to see why the genre continues to be like catnip
to prestige-minded filmmakers and performers alike. But as with any genre that gains
popularity, the films within it start to feel the same after a while, having
accumulated their own sets of formulas, tropes, and conventions over the years
(take a look at the underrated spoof, “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” for
hilarious skewering of some of these formulas).
A trend in
recent biopics has been to focus on a specific, defining period in the life of the subject instead of trying to condense an entire life into a
single film, but for the most part the blueprint has remained unchanged. This
means that the ones that truly stand out are the ones with the guts to chuck
the formula out the window. Two new biopics are getting a Rochester release
this week, and while one of these artistic profiles finds success by taking
chances, the other sticks mostly with the tried and true.
The more
inventive (and successful) of the pair is “Love & Mercy,”
director Bill Pohlad’s bifurcated tale about the life of Beach Boys
singer-songwriter Brian Wilson. The film hops between two periods in Wilson’s
life: the first in the 1960’s as Wilson (played by Paul Dano) quits touring
with the band after suffering a nervous breakdown, choosing to focus his
attention on producing and arranging the group’s landmark album, “Pet
Sounds.” Hoping to prove the group was capable of more than silly
fun-in-the-sun tunes, he finds himself butting heads with bandmate and cousin Mike Love (Jake Abel), as well as his disapproving
father (Bill Camp).
The second
plotline takes place in the 80’s, finding Wilson (now portrayed by John Cusack)
a damaged man under the control of manipulative psychotherapist Eugene Landy (a
maniacal Paul Giamatti). Despite his fragile state, he strikes up a romantic
relationship with model-turned-Cadillac saleswoman, Melinda Ledbetter (the
always great Elizabeth Banks).
“Love &
Mercy” is anchored by two wonderful performances from Dano and Cusack. Dano has
the benefit of looking the part, bearing a striking resemblance to Wilson in
the mid-60’s, but he finds a compelling balance
between Wilson’s infectious creative energy and his emerging mental illness.
Cusack has a tendency to sleepwalk through many of his recent roles, but here
he captures Wilson’s fragile, almost childlike mindset while revealing enough
of the man underneath to convince us why Ledbetter might actually find herself
falling for him.
This is only
Pohlad’s second feature as director, after serving as producer on films like
“12 Years a Slave,” “Brokeback Mountain,” and “Wild,” but it feels like the
work of a longtime pro.
He’s aided
by Oren Moverman (“I’m Not There,” another
wildly original musician biopic) and Michael A. Lerner’s minimalist script, and
some inventive sound design that effortlessly puts us in the jumbled headspace
of a broken genius.
More straightforward is “Saint Laurent,” French director
Bertrand Bonello’s flashy profile of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.
Bonello’s script (co-written with Thomas Bidegain) follows the traditional
rise-and-fall-and-rise-again trajectory, skipping over the designer’s childhood
and early career to begin with the artist (portrayed by Gaspard Ulliel,
“Hannibal Rising”) at the height of notoriety. Tracking roughly the decade from
the mid-1960’s to the mid-70’s, the film jumps from event to event, with the
through line being Laurent’s relationship with longtime lover and business
partner, Pierre Bergé (Jérémie Renier), contrasted against the affair with
Jacques de Bascher (Louis Garrel) that led him down the path of sex, drugs, and
self-destruction.
“Saint
Laurent” does diverge from its biopic predecessors in avoiding the one-to-one
explanations for their subject’s behaviors that makes satisfying viewing but is
rather reductive to chronicling a life. In this case, Bonello seems to skip
those sort of explanations altogether, never giving any sort of insight in
Saint Laurent’s interior state. Ulliel’s bland performance doesn’t help,
relying mostly on his wry smile and killer cheekbones to create a character.
Throughout, Laurent comes across mostly as a blank slate.
Visually
sumptuous but dramatically inert, the film contains stylistic flourishes that
occasionally liven things up, like a split-screen between Laurent’s late-60s’
designs and newsreel footage of events from the turbulent era. This
style-over-substance approach may be appropriate for the subject, but it makes
for a less than compelling narrative. Still, things always look lovely thanks
to cinematographer Josée Deshaies’s chilly, artfully arranged compositions. And
the film does find success in documenting Saint Laurent’s creative process; the
scenes following the fabrication methods behind the designs are some of the
film’s best. Unfortunately, Bonello gets sidetracked from the more fascinating
sartorial side of the story to focus on tedious hedonism.
This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2015.
