It is possible to appreciate the talents of an actor, their personal qualities and their technique, while also disliking or even resenting their signature role. Establishing that binary is the way that I’m beginning my consideration of Dear Evan Hansen, the new film adaptation of the award-winning Broadway musical. The actor in question is of course Ben Platt, who won a Tony for playing Evan Hansen onstage and who here reprises his role. Platt is 28, and – for those who don’t know – the character of Evan is a high-school senior. The pre-release discourse around the Dear Evan Hansen film has focused to a large degree on the fact that Platt on camera appears to be much too old for this role, and that the makeup, hair, and Platt’s own physical choices don’t help. But Platt’s vocal talents can’t be faked. There’s a plaintive quality to Platt’s voice that is just right for this material, and he has a handle on the sort of tumbling, frantic stream of words that many of the songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul rely on to indicate Evan’s mental state.
However. While it feels cheap to belabor the degree that Platt appears to be playing an adult in high-school cosplay, it isn’t wrong. The distancing effect that Platt’s age creates is most apparent in Evan’s scenes with Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever), the sister of a classmate of Evan’s who has taken his own life. That classmate, Connor Murphy (Colton Ryan), was the school outcast whose interception of a letter Evan writes to himself as a therapy exercise sets off a series of misunderstandings that drive the plot. It is that plot where Dear Evan Hansen gets into trouble, because what the filmmakers (Stephen Chbosky directed, and Steven Levenson adapted the book of his musical into the screenplay) want to be a rich affirmation of each person’s self-worth and the transformative power of friendship instead plays as a story how people manipulate the goodwill of others as a panacea for their own struggles. Mr. and Mrs. Murphy (Danny Pino and Amy Adams) believe Evan to have been Connor’s best friend, and since Evan’s own social status at school wasn’t much better than Connor’s the mistake goes uncorrected. Had the role of Evan been played by an age-appropriate actor the lies might read as a sad misjudgment, but here it plays as a grown man hiding something from grieving people. The movie doesn’t take time to give Evan much interiority outside of the songs, and Platt’s acting doesn’t suggest the degree to which Evan must be in conflict with himself.
Evan isn’t the only character to use Connor’s death as a distraction from other issues. Alana (Amandla Stenberg) is a classmate who we first meet leading cheers at a pep rally. She’s initially presented as go-getter, with friends and plenty of extracurricular activities, but in a song called “The Anonymous Ones” written just for the movie Alana confesses that she too suffers from anxiety and depression. It is Alana who turns Connor’s death from a sad event into a Cause, and it’s a choice she makes late on that will have unintended consequences that take the movie to its conclusion. Alana organizes a memorial for Connor that is the setting for “You Will Be Found”, the musical’s best-known song and in the film’s telling the moment when Connor is claimed by the Internet as a symbol of how we all must do better by each other. Chbosky cuts to a series of YouTube clips and Instagram posts of strangers thanking Evan for his memorial speech, a choice that unintentionally creates the effect of the movie congratulating itself on its own themes. Meanwhile, Evan is spending more time with Zoe and the Murphys and trying to prevent his single mother (Julianne Moore, who makes the most of limited screen time) from finding out what is really going on.
The idea of Internet virality as a plot device is a symptom of the way the filmmakers confuse good intentions with profundity. The transformation of Connor into an Instagram sensation feels insulting and reductive and it certainly doesn’t lessen the pain that the Murphy’s feel. Connor is revealed after death to have been a Kurt Vonnegut fan, which feels like a pretty on the nose choice if you’ve ever carried non-school books to school in your backpack. The resolution of Dear Evan Hansen isn’t a surprise, but it comes at the expense of any serious interrogation of mental health or indeed its characters’ own behavior.
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