Sad vibrations from biopic of a tortured musical genius

LOVE & Mercy, Bill Pohlad's sad, searing and darkly intense biopic about Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, takes an unconventional look at the inner workings of a musical genius. The film conveys, with a strong degree of empathy, a sense of what it is like to be both blessed with uncommon talent and also overwhelmed by it.

Parallel narratives set roughly two decades apart follow specific periods in Wilson's life: first during a creative peak when he was a master craftsman in the recording studio, and then in his 40s, as he battled real and imagined demons and struggled to cope with the voices in his head. It's a sorry tale of a complex boy-genius and his slow descent into a deep, dark place.

By turns fascinating and troubling, the film alternates between Wilson's California Sound period in the mid-1960s - when happy-pop Beach Boys songs like Fun, Fun, Fun and I Get Around belied the personal and professional pressures he was facing - and the '80s, when he grew increasingly unstable and reclusive while under the supervision of a psychologist with questionable ethics.