On demand: "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road"

Musical biopics and docs so often work in tandem. 2014's Love & Mercy reawakened interest in the life and work of Brian Wilson, if indeed that interest had ever fallen dormant, given the airplay typically afforded to the songs of The Beach Boys. Seven years on, emerging into a world made newly uncertain by Covid, there came this legacy doc from director Brent Wilson (no relation). In most respects, Long Promised Road invites description as a conventional example of its type: much evocative archive, broken up by interviews with Wilson's musical contemporaries (Elton John), acolytes and admirers (ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Nick Jonas) and other observers besides. The key difference is that the film's subject, though still very much with us, has nevertheless to be coaxed out of his own head. We watch Wilson, as he was in the late 2010s after a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, being driven around the places of his sunkissed California youth - and, in spots, literally having his hand held - by his friend, the Rolling Stone journalist Jason Fine. It's the pop doc idea of special treatment: the camera holds back, so as to not to unsettle this famously troubled soul nor get unnecessarily in his face, while Fine maintains a gentle line of questioning, even as he broaches the events that led to Wilson being so troubled in the first place. In short, Wilson has to be reassured and becalmed rather than grilled or interrogated; given the immense joy he's put out into the world, this is surely the least he deserves at this point in time. But does it make for a compelling film?

If I say yes, it's because this filmmaker is less interested in perpetuating hackneyed ideas of genius than he is in exploring the vulnerability of that genius. Those illustrious talking heads freely compare the former Beach Boy to Mozart, Schubert and other prodigal musical talents: "He had an orchestra in his head," Elton notes. "The Beatles had George Martin to do it for them, but Brian... he did it himself." Elsewhere, producer Don Was is set before a mixing desk loaded with Beach Boys masters, and charged with figuring out how exactly Wilson came to weave these complex pieces together. (His conclusion: God only knows.) Yet as the film goes on to illustrate, Wilson was so gifted at one thing (orchestration) that everything else (let's call it living, or making sense of the altogether atonal chaos of this world) was left to fall by the wayside. The Wilson we rejoin here is visibly nervous about re-entering that world; that's why the bulk of Fine's interview has to be conducted in-car, with GoPros attached to the mirrors and dashboard. (As an only slightly less troubled pop sensibility put it: Here in my car/I feel safest of all.) The upside to Wilson's condition is a guilelessness that clearly factored into the songs in some way. Like George Washington, he cannot tell a lie, instead responding with sudden non-sequitur or teary-eyed bouts of candour. All the facts of this life are still in there, but they're some way down, and mixed up with evidently painful business. He is at once the perfect interviewee and yet all too visibly exploitable, as becomes apparent some time before the film reaches the Landy years. Still, we need only to see how Wilson comes alive anew when presented with the contents of Fine's car stereo or sat before the piano in a recording studio to know how music simplifies and, at its most potent, sporadically saves us from ourselves. What Long Promised Road gets to is that much-discussed link between music and mental illness, which can make a CD rip of old songs as liberating for someone with schizoaffective disorder as it may be for someone with Alzheimer's. Elton was right: to listen to The Beach Boys is to listen to the inside of one man's head - it's just some people have more going on inside their heads than others. Wilson's film has been made with a lot of love - and no Mike Love, thankfully.

Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road is now streaming via NOW, and available to rent via Prime Video and YouTube.