The whole situation is weird and wrongheaded and misses several dozen points. In other words, he was found too bad for Connor’s grieving family and the kids at school who were affected by Evan’s lies (especially the girl who struggles with anxiety and helped spearhead the anti-suicide organization). Everything does come crashing down for Evan in the second act, but nobody seems to learn any lessons except Evan himself, thanks to his mother, who makes sure he knows that she loves him no matter what he does. Yet the whole sequence is played straight. Caring about someone because you saw them sing on YouTube can be meaningful, but we all know how quickly pet causes sparked by viral videos fade away. Connor, crucially, was definitely not found, and without his entirely false and frankly kind of horrifying story, Evan wouldn’t have been either.
You will be found lyrics movie#
The big act-one finale, “ You Will Be Found” - which the movie plays as a social media movement that touches the lives of millions around the country - should be the height of dramatic irony. Nobody cared about Connor till he was dead, and nobody cared about Evan until he was linked to Connor. It also seems like it should be satirical, or ironic, or something. Soon he becomes the family’s (including Zoe’s) beloved source of connection to their dearly departed and misunderstood son and brother, as well as the center of a schoolwide anti-suicide movement, a role he embraces with mounting enthusiasm. Swept up in the moment, Evan does not correct them. They come to Evan to talk about his best friend Connor. Then, a few days later, everyone discovers that Connor has died by suicide.Ĭonnor’s parents found Evan’s letter on him - addressed to Evan - and understood it, quite reasonably, to be a letter from Connor to Evan, a sign of their close and fertile friendship.
Connor has just sarcastically signed Evan’s blank cast with a Sharpie, seemingly an overture for some kind of friendship, but when he sees Zoe’s name on the letter he flips out and storms away. The letter is picked up by Connor, one of the high school’s other (and angrier) social pariahs, whose younger sister Zoe happens to be Evan’s crush.
His therapist has instructed him to write letters to himself - beginning, of course, with “Dear Evan Hansen” - and one day he does, at school, and prints it off. Until recently I didn’t know what Dear Evan Hansen was about, and when a friend explained the plot to me, I was speechless, agog, eyes popping.Įvan Hansen is a social outcast with a broken wrist who lives with severe social anxiety and depression. I might be able to overlook all this if it weren’t for the actual story. The direction at times seems to make things worse, with lots of close-ups on his face and a muddled sense of space. Ben Platt, aged 27, is obviously too old to be playing a high school senior, and the mannerisms he adopts to slip into the character of the excruciatingly insecure Evan make him appear older rather than younger. There’s just no way around some of the film’s problems.
There’s a lot about the movie that plainly doesn’t work, and the critical response hasn’t held back. “If you like the musical, you’ll probably like the movie.” So to spare his feelings, I hedged a little. (More on that anon.) I didn’t quite know what the question behind the kind man’s question was. I was still wrestling with my feelings about it, aided by a documentary about, of all people, smooth-jazz saxophone star Kenny G. The story of an anxious high schooler named Evan who, in order to be liked, lies about his friendship with a fellow student who died by suicide, it had been one of the festival’s most anticipated premieres. The film in question - a screen adaptation of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, directed by Stephen Chbosky and featuring the show’s star Ben Platt - had been the opening-night premiere at the festival a few days earlier. When I nodded and said I was, her husband asked me, with a hint of fear in his voice, “Did you see Dear Evan Hansen? What did you think?” “Excuse me, are you a journalist?” the woman asked through her mask. Last week, as I settled into a seat at the Princess of Wales theater and pulled out my notebook before yet another screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, the nice older couple sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder.
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