Shawn Mendes: In Wonder

The documentary follows Shawn Mendes through the 2019 world tour and afterwards while he prepares a new album. Stage, hotel room, sound check, plane, studio. The subject is not fame but someone in his early twenties trying to protect his voice and his health; the voice gives out during the tour and a doctor tells him to stop speaking. Grant Singer directs. It was released on Netflix on 23 November 2020. Its second subject is his relationship with Camila Cabello and its connection to the songs; the narrative does not hide it and does not dwell on it either. The documentary was made in cooperation with its subject and carries no critical distance. There are difficult scenes, but none of them go outside Mendes's own control. The passages that work best are about songwriting; a melody is followed step by step from a first version recorded on a phone to its final shape in the studio. Grant Singer is a director known mainly for music videos and the visual language carries that. Who it is for: Shawn Mendes listeners and anyone interested in how records are made. Who it is not for: it is not a critical portrait, the structure is loose, and it carries no narrative for a viewer indifferent to the artist.