Love and Mercy – the Brian Wilson bio-pic in class

Was I sure that this particular film, the Bill Pohlad bio-pic about Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, was going to work with the twenty-eight fifteen year olds of class V4D? No, not at all. Both our lessons each week are right at the end of the day when pupils are tired and concentration less focused; no, I really wasn’t sure.

But I wanted to show the film because on the surface it ticked many of the boxes that I wanted to refer to in the short film studies course that I offer around this time each year.

Part of the reason for choosing it was that being a bio-pic, the film narrative sits nicely in the global theme that we were dealing with of fact and fiction in the cultural (and in this case in the film) world. But added to this, there were the interesting other issues of:

• The popular culture of the past being introduced to my pupils
• The extensive use of music in the film
• Mental health perspectives being explored
• The lengths that the filmmakers have gone to, to get the ‘look’ of the film and the actors right

All good reasons to show the film to my pupils and discuss with how the filmmakers involved had set about presenting the story of Brian Wilson to us.

 

Yet sitting in the classroom watching it together I still really wasn’t sure. It’s a fairly long film and we had to spread it over three lessons on three different days, not and ideal setup. If I’m honest, the first 30-40 minutes are a little slow and, for a younger audience perhaps a little confusing as the narrative jumps backwards and forwards between the nineteen sixties and late eighties. Time is spent setting the stage for the main body of the film. That first lesson the class watched with me, they were a little twitchy at times. Sometimes they seemed to be finding Wilson’s unpredictable behaviour funny rather than disturbing.

Were we going to make it to the end of the film, to start with I really wasn’t sure. But I wanted to persist. One of my big aims with the film studies course is to offer material that is outside of the pupils’ normal area of experience. I want to stretch and draw them into new areas, but without going so far that it switches them off.

We returned to the film the following lesson, and slowly, you could see them being drawn into the film. The room went quiet and they became more settled. By the end they were thoroughly engaged and wanting to see how the creeping tension that is built through the film is played out.

Now, two weeks later I am reading the 1000-1200 word essays that the pupils wrote about the movie. I was curious, I felt I really needed the proof, the confirmation that they had enjoyed it as much as I had secretly hoped.

It would seem that my uncertainty about the film was misplaced, almost without exception the reports have been both enthusiastic and well written. A couple of points stand out. The styling of the visual appearance of the film is greatly appreciated. Having shown them a few film clips of the real Beach Boys they see the parallels and the efforts that has been made to create the look of the past and the appearance of the main characters. The focus on the mental health issues experienced by Brian Wilson throughout his life hit home in the minds of the pupils. It made for fascinating reading. The appreciation of the huge difficulties and abuse that Wilson suffered made a very strong impression and undoubtedly broadened their understanding in this area.

 

The film continually jumps from the sixties to the eighties, with two different actors (Paul Dano and John Cusack) playing the role of Wilson. It was interesting to hear which section of the film engaged the pupils most. For me it was Dano and the younger version of the musician. This was partly for the performance, but mostly for the music and the look at the creative process that it gave. However for the bulk of my pupils it was the older phase of Wilson’s life that drew the attention. Why? Well two reasons I think, partly the love story that was being played out with Melinda Ledbetter. But more so for the sense of jeopardy that was being created, was Melinda going to be able to save the hugely vulnerable Brian Wilson from the manipulative clutches of Dr. Eugene Landy?

All-in all reason enough to use the film again next year? The answer is simple, yes certainly.

Gregory Crewdson: Cathedral of the Pines

The silence is almost deafening. Crewdson’s frozen moments in time are peopled views of small town America on the fringes of the mysteries and secrets of the forest. They are immaculately constructed compositions with a huge amount of attention given to detail both in terms of their technical achievement but more significantly the way in which each of these large-scale photographs are packed with elements that seem to be so consciously placed. Where and who do those footprints in the snow lead to? Why are there so many apples in the grass when there is not a single apple on the tree and what, if anything, has just been said?

In this collection of work at The Photographer’s Gallery in London the human relationship with nature seems often to be present, but is not wild and beautiful nature, it is nature that seems always to disclose a human resonance, a production forest, remnants of a previous human industrial intervention or simply the detritus of daily life left discarded.

The photographs draw a variety of parallels from the simple domesticity of a woman at a sink in front of a window, that has more than a little Vermeer about it, to the visual connections with Edward Hopper’s often equally silent interiors. But it’s more than compositional parallels, the rather dark sense of mystery that hangs around these carefully positioned individuals brings more than just a little connection with my memories of watching David Lynch’s Twin Peaks all those years ago.

But for me, viewing them from a perspective that includes twentieth century Dutch art history I am reminded also of the work of Carel Wellink, with their seemingly film set like sense of reality, a disquieting sharp focus where you struggle to feel comfortable with the view that you have stumbled on.

Crewdson’s work is, for me at least, a fascinating discovery and offer some food for thought for future education based projects.