I came out of the flawed, deeply moving and often beautiful Brian Wilson biopic “Love & Mercy” thinking about D.H. Lawrence’s poem “Song of a Man Who Has Come Through.” For one thing, that title serves as a pretty good description of Wilson, the co-founder, principal songwriter and all-around musical genius behind the Beach Boys. This powerful and intimate film by Bill Pohlad, a veteran movie producer who reveals himself here with a genuinely surprising directing debut (he made an unreleased film in the ‘90s), tries to evade the typical pitfalls of the rock ‘n’ roll biography by focusing on two turning points in Wilson’s life, separated by 20 years or more: The creation of his quasi-symphonic masterwork “Pet Sounds” in the mid-1960s, along with his subsequent mental breakdown, and his disastrous, dependent relationship with a manipulative therapist named Eugene Landy in the 1980s.

Paul Dano and John Cusack portray the “Pet Sounds” genius in two different, significant eras of his life