Somewhere deep in the text of Dear Evan Hansen there’s a poignancy that writer Steven Levenson is attempting to express. An abiding message that speaks to lonely and depressed teenagers, possibly to reassure them that they matter and give them hope. There’s certainly a space for that kind of thing in contemporary pop storytelling, and especially in musical theatre, where the spectacle of song can pronounce and give voice to issues in deeply moving, cathartic ways. I have no doubt that was his intent. It isn’t what comes across though, thanks in large part to everything surrounding that fundamental core.
Like many people not immediately in the know of mainstream musical theatre, I until this year assumed Dear Evan Hansen was a kind of Y/A musical gay love story. Something about the title and that image of Ben Platt on an intimate darkened stage singing a passionate “I Want” song that has certain closeted connotations. It took reading the plot summary on Wikipedia several months back to learn that not only is that not what Dear Evan Hansen is about, but what Dear Evan Hansen is actually about is bonkers and strikingly insensitive for a supposedly serious coming-of-age musical drama. However, learning this I knew I would have to see the movie when it came out, not just out of obligation but curiosity as to what it was going to do with that material.
Musical theatre adaptations have not had a great run this last decade, but of all of them, Dear Evan Hansen might have been the one most amenable to a movie adaptation -though I haven’t seen the show, there isn’t much in the movie that indicates the presentation is compromised by its’ new format. There are no big ensemble musical numbers or specific set-pieces, it’s structured very much like any teen movie. But it just happens to be a teen movie about a kid impersonating the friend of a boy who committed suicide.
That is the secret plot of Dear Evan Hansen. Seventeen year old Evan (played by a now twenty-seven year old Platt) is a depressed friendless kid starting the new school year with a broken arm and a mandate by his therapist to write letters to himself each day. Through a series of circumstances, one of these letters finds its’ way into the hands of a loner bully Connor (Colton Ryan) who later kills himself. The letter is found on him, convincing his family that Evan was his close friend and Evan plays along with the ruse to get closer to his crush, Connor’s sister Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever).
It’s essentially a storyline from an off-colour sitcom -the George B-plot of a Seinfeld episode, but set in a high school and played straight with the main character meant to still be relatable and endearing. Yet it never quite convinces the audience of any noble motivation in Evan or any way in which his actions can be sincerely justified. What surely doesn’t help is the much mocked age gap between Platt and his character -which is indeed fairly noticeable even while Platt is only a few years older than co-stars like Dever and Amandla Stenberg. You feel a bit bad for the guy given he does really know this part and sings very well, but as much as hunches himself over or mimics teenage ticks it never passes. It also clearly distracts him from other aspects of the performance -the one exception being the musical numbers. Platt’s got more songs by far than anyone else and he is surely putting his all into them. It’s unfortunate then that director Stephen Chbosky isn’t.
The songs for Dear Evan Hansen were written by Pasek and Paul, the music team behind La La Land and The Greatest Showman, and while the pieces for this show aren’t near as good as the ones for either of those, they are a step above the material they’re written for. The song sequences are generally the least objectionable parts of the movie, even as they come with sometimes questionable relevancy. But none of them hit with particular strength due in large part to the dull manner in which they are presented. What should be an emotionally stirring number, “For Forever” is almost entirely staged around a dinner table with no standout compositions or neat editing choices. Many of them make use of montage to colour the songs a little bit, but these don’t convey much real weight -some numbers have virtually no choreography. The one big group piece “You Will Be Found” is communicated digitally -which makes technical sense, but is visually boring. And perhaps the only truly great song of this musical, “Waving Through a Window” at the very start, though sung terrifically by Platt, is extremely uninspired in execution for what should be the shows’ signature number. I think the reason for this is a preoccupation with keeping the film grounded, so the musical numbers aren’t allowed to be elaborate or exciting -but it hurts their impact substantially. What made the songs in The Greatest Showman come alive so well in spite of how bad everything around them was, was how creatively staged and shot they were. And Dear Evan Hansen is not a movie that should be worried about the sanctity of its’ reality.
Amy Adams and Danny Pino play Connor’s parents fairly awkwardly, the latest in a string of somewhat embarrassing performances for Adams. They are poorly-written grieving characters though, so it’s not on Adams that they don’t work. That’s especially true too of Dever, who is trying her best with a very unfortunate character who has some interesting qualities to begin with (her dislike of her brother even in death and struggle to process the tragedy healthily), but ultimately devolves into a really typical love interest. She and Stenberg, who plays a student council rep and activist who also suffers from depression and may or may not have a crush on Evan, seem cast to a type they’ve played before -and are both far better actresses than the material allows. Nik Dodani is also playing a stock character -the sarcastic and cynical “gay best friend”. Only Julianne Moore, playing Evans’ mother, manages to come out with a genuinely decent performance in the film -there is something affecting about her relationship with her son (and how he thoroughly doesn’t appreciate what she does for him) that feels sincere.
The same can’t really be said though for the films’ treatment of themes of depression and suicide. Dear Evan Hansen clearly means well with its’ addressing of these subjects, but it doesn’t do much more than that -simply address and acknowledge them. We never see Evan in therapy or discuss the way he’s feeling with anybody else -our only insights come through songs. And while those songs can make great use of some nice or colourful metaphors, they’re also largely surface level. Severe depression and social anxiety are also conflated to a rather extreme degree. Given Evan is a teenager, a matter of leeway can be expected here, up until he exploits the death of a classmate. In perhaps some awareness of how off-putting this plot is, the movie sincerely attempts to be respectful towards the topic of suicide. And occasionally it does dig thoroughly into the social stress such a thing puts on a family. But at the end of the day the story isn’t about that family, it’s about Evan, and as much as it might want to be Ordinary People, it can never escape that fact: that suicide functions in the film as a means of character development for Evan. Before the lie is exposed, as it inevitably will be, there’s no indication he cares much about the real Connor -only the version he invents for stories to tell his family.
All this said, the movie does try to correct a few things from the original musical for what I can gather. It gives Evan at least a couple mild consequences for his actions, though not to a degree that adequately confronts the gravity of what he put a whole family through. He still feasibly comes out the hero of sorts, in part due to the film also mandating he put some work of personal atonement in -also not entirely sufficient, but better than the alternative. I’ve heard Dear Evan Hansen compared to a few other movies, none of which I wholly agree with. It’s not this years’ Collateral Beauty or Life Itself because it doesn’t condescend or frustrate the way those do and honestly isn’t trying to be high-minded. It’s also not equivalent to Cats because Cats is fun! Dear Evan Hansen is just another dismal musical adaptation with a plot that is bizarre and tone-deaf enough to get your attention, but not played with such brazenly misguided confidence that it’s a memorable trainwreck. And it comes out in a year with more musical movies than usual, each of them better and far more interesting, that I’m confident once the Ben Platt teen jokes run their course, nobody’s going to think about Dear Evan Hansen again.
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