Every year there’s a lead performance or two in an indie-level film that’s so drop-to-your-knees mesmerizing that people like myself throw back the shutters and shout “definitely award-worthy…make room!” (Last year’s contender in this regard was Adele Exarchopolous in Blue Is The Warmest Color.) And every time I blow the horn the cynical, know-it-all Gurus and Gold Derby-ers say “nope…no way, Jose…the distributor either can’t afford or won’t pay for a serious awards campaign, let alone for the services of a Lisa Taback-level campaign strategist…this is a Spirit Awards contender at best.” I spit on that attitude, that corroded way of thinking. Because I’m telling you straight and true that Paul Dano‘s performance as the youngish Brian Wilson in Bill Pohlad‘s Love and Mercy, which I saw this afternoon, is almost spookily great.

Perfectly fattened-up Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in Bill Pohlad’s Love and Mercy.

Wilson’s disturbed spirit hums and throbs in the 30 year-old Dano, who looks like he gained 35 or 40 pounds to play the genius Beach Boy maestro in his mid ’60s blimp period. You can really feel the vibrations and sense the genius-level ferment and the off-balance emotionality. Inwardly and outwardly it’s a stunning, drop-dead transformation and the finest performance of Dano’s career, hands down. It is also, trust me, just as commendable as the other highly-touted, year-end heavyweight performances (including Birdman‘s Michael Keaton, The Theory of Everything‘s Eddie Redmayne, The Imitation Game‘s Benedict Cumberbatch), if not more so. You might be thinking it but don’t you dare dismiss Dano’s performance with a wave of your hand. I know what you’re going to say so don’t even say it. Just shut up.

Not to mention John Cusack also as the 40ish Wilson in the same film, which shifts back and forth between the mid to late ’60s (i.e., the recording of Pet Sounds and Smile) and the mid to late ’80s (i.e., “the Landy years”). Cusack has been on a downturn for the last three or four years, playing ghouls and creeps and psycho killers…my heart aches for the guy. True, he’s had two good roles over the last couple of years — Richard Nixon in The Butler and the husband-masseuse in David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars — but this is a revelation. Cusack plays a gentle but very solemn and intimidated Wilson during the period in which he was under the firm hand of the disreputable Eugene Landy, who died in 2006. (Landy got Wilson to lose weight and get healthier, but at a tremendous price.) Cusack is child-like and Gentle Ben-ish, and as convincing and fully submitted to his task as Dano is to his. For the first time in my moviegoing life I wasn’t bothered by two actors playing the same character — quite a landmark.

It’s a travesty that six years ago some guy mixed remnants of Alex North‘s rejected score for 2001: A Space Odyssey with the “discovery of animal bone as a weapon” sequence. It’s obviously not properly synched, but even so North’s score seems wildly off-pitch. It pulls Kubrick’s film down to earth at every stanza, every measure. It even sounds fucking Spartacus-y at times. Then again it’s probably impossible for any serious fan of this 1968 classic to contemplate the film with any music other than Ligeti‘s space music and Strauss’s “Blue Danube.”

Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young is his snappiest and most commercially appealing film yet. Not as darkly hilarious as Greenberg or as visually ravishing and mood-trippy as Frances Ha, but it’ll be well reviewed and catch on with most under-50 urban sophistos. It’s a nimble, fast-moving, culturally attuned relationship dramedy about a generational chasm (late 20somethings vs. early 40somethings) or more precisely the vague sense of anxiety that somewhat older guys have about younger guys in their field or realm — a fear of being out-hustled or out-clevered and possibly even left behind if they’re not careful. That would be Ben Stiller, a somewhat old-school, gone-stale documentarian who’s fascinated and flattered by the attentions of Adam Driver, a GenY hipster documentarian. Stiller is also a wee bit inimidated by Driver, and there’s the rub. Their saner, more emotionally healthy significant others are played by Naomi Watts and Amanda Seyfried and there are plenty more rubs coming from their end also. (“I’m not sure I want to be rubbed by you at all” — Rex Harrison‘s Julius Caesar in Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s Cleopatra.)

I won’t spoil (I can’t — it’s 1:20 pm and the next film starts in 40 minutes) but While We’re Young is more than a little similar to Woody Allen‘s Crimes and Misdemeanors if you remove Woody’s unhappy marriage to whatsername plus the affair with Mia Farrow plus Martin Landau‘s affair-and-murder plot. Like Stiller’s character, Allen also played a less-than-successful, career-frustrated documentarian who’s been working for too long on a doc that leans heavily on interview footage of a respected elderly egghead figure (Peter Yarrow in Baumbach’s film, psychologist Martin Bergmann in Allen’s). Stiller resents the younger, less ethically constrained, destined-for-success Driver while Allen resented his wife’s glib, obnoxious, more successful older brother, played by Alan Alda. And both films end with Stiller and Allen’s character resigned and glumly acknowledging that the world doesn’t care about their ethical concerns about Driver or Alda, and is more than ready to cut them a break while it has little respect or affection for 40ish under-achievers.

Chris Rock‘s Top Five, which I also saw earlier today, is similarly influenced by Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (’79), at least in terms of the broad strokes. But I can’t get into it because Bill Pohlad‘s Love and Mercy starts at 2 pm and it’s 1:38 pm. I can at least say it’s Rock’s most engaging self-directed film ever, and one that comes closest to reflecting his persona or personality as well as his own life. It’s not strictly autobiographical but it’s apparently close enough.

I was planning to tap out a couple of stories after returning from last night’s The Theory of Everything premiere after-party but the wifi at my Beverley Street condo had a seizure — call it a mild stroke — which led to a diagnostic discussion with a Liquid Web tech-support guy plus the usual hand-wringings, wall-punchings (the unit doesn’t have a refrigerator) and frenzied attempts at restoring service. I went to bed with sore knuckles but the wifi was gloriously back in action when I awoke this morning at 7 am. Four films today — Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young ay 8:30 am, Chris Rock‘s Top Five at 10:45 am, Bill Pohlad‘s Love and Mercy (the Brian Wilson druggy meltdown in the ’70s film with with Paul Dano as young Wilson, John Cusack as the somewhat older Wilson, Paul Giamatti as Dr. Eugene Landy) at 2 pm and Andrea Di Stefano‘s Escobar: Paradise Lost (Benicio del Toro as Pablo Escobar) at 4:15 pm.

(l. to r.) Santa Barbara Film Festival director Roger Durling, The Theory of Everything star Eddie Redmayne, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond at last night’s after-party following pic’s premiere at Princess of Wales, which generates less-than-satisfactory sound.

(l. to r.) Chris Rock, Greta Gerwig, While We’re Young director Noah Baumbach at party for Rock’s Top Five, which suddenly became TIFF’s leading buzz film yesterday (and which I’ll be seeing later this morning right after the 8:30 am screening of Baumbach’s film). The other current high-intrigue title of the moment is The Good Lie, the Reese Witherspoon / Lost Boys of Sudan flick that relatively few have seen thus far, along with The Theory of Everything.

(l. to r.) Cedric “if you want tact, call a tactician” The Entertainer, Chris Rock, While We’re Young‘s Ben Stiller.

The Theory of Everything screenwriter Anthony McCarten.

The Theory of Everything composer Johann Jóhannsson, who last night told me something I’d never heard (or had forgotten), which is that Alex North composed a rejected score for 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that it’s purchasable online.