In a world wherever Lindsay Clancy tin animate an onslaught of sympathetic voyeuristic fascination, why not Elizabeth Holmes? Earlier tonight, the screening of an unannounced enigma movie astatine the Telluride Film Festival generated each spot arsenic overmuch pre-screening buzz arsenic immoderate of the awesome titles programmed here. And erstwhile the movie was revealed to beryllium “You Can See Everything,” a 174-minute documentary, co-directed by the cult comedian Nathan Fielder, astir Elizabeth Holmes, the erstwhile CEO of Theranos who is now serving an 11-year situation condemnation aft being convicted of defrauding her investors, the sensation of “WTF? I’ve got to watch this!” did not subside arsenic the movie went on. It only intensified.
“You Can See Everything” is conscionable astir the furthest point from a “pure” documentary you’ve ever seen. That’s portion of its entreaty — it’s a one-of-a-kind reality-TV-as-hangout-movie psychodrama circus. Yet it’s been made pinch a tone of existent inquiry, driven by Fielder’s acidly quizzical characteristic (as an onscreen interviewer, he’s sewage the astir drop-dead deadpan since Steven Wright), and it gets its hooks successful you.
Fielder isn’t present to propulsion unfastened the mobility of Elizabeth Holmes’ guilt. He wants to cognize what made her tick. But why, you whitethorn ask, is the comedian down shows for illustration “The Curse” and “The Rehearsal” making a three-hour movie astir the female who became America’s youngest self-made female billionaire by convincing the world that she’d created a revolutionary caller intends of humor testing? Holmes, aft her conviction, stayed retired of the nationalist eye, but soon earlier her situation condemnation was group to statesman she decided she wanted personification to archive her past days of freedom. Maybe she wanted to person her say?
Whatever the motivation, Fielder, who has often operated successful a nether area betwixt fabrication and reality, was looking for a task to collaborate connected pinch Lance Oppenheim, a documentarian he’d go friends with. And so, pinch the support of A24, and without rather knowing what they were aft (or, by their ain admission, what the hellhole they were doing), the 2 of them stepped into the breach. Thirty-five days earlier the commencement of Holmes’ situation sentence, successful 2023, they brought a camera unit to the freely wood-paneled beachside location successful Del Mar wherever she was surviving pinch her partner, the California edifice heir Billy Evans, and their 2 children (including an babe daughter). Fielder was location to bent out, observe, and question and reply Holmes, trying to get wrong her head. That proved to beryllium a weirder and wilder travel than anyone mightiness person expected.
The Elizabeth Holmes we spot has a winsome soft presence, pinch a Cupid’s-bow grin and eyes that beam without blinking excessively much. She resembles the ’80s and ’90s character Kim Greist, and has a mode that’s disarming successful its gentleness. Yet erstwhile Fielder asks astir the crimes she was convicted of, she pleads a unusual benignant of ignorance. She claims she did thing wrong, and it’s clear she believes it. But really is that possible?
In 2015, Holmes had go a personage entrepreneur, based connected the $9 cardinal valuation of her wellness exertion company, Theranos — a institution that turned retired to person been built connected a complete scam. For a little time, Holmes convinced the world that she’d developed a revolutionary instrumentality for humor testing that required very mini volumes of blood, specified arsenic the magnitude you’d get from a pinprick. She convinced top-drawer investors (including Rupert Murdoch and Larry Ellison) to move millions of dollars into the company. For credibility, she assembled a committee of board that included specified ancient luminaries arsenic George P. Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and James Mattis. There was only 1 problem: the “revolutionary” exertion didn’t exist.
Numerous experts, starting pinch the Stanford aesculapian professor Phyllis Gardner, told Holmes that her thought wouldn’t work; you couldn’t excavation voluminous amounts of information from conscionable a fewer droplets of blood. But Holmes, on pinch her business partner, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani (who was besides her romanticist partner), sold the deception anyway. For a short while they were rather “successful” astatine it, though successful hindsight it’s clear that the castle successful the aerial they built — each spun retired of the trendy thought that aesculapian subject could beryllium democratized — was destined to clang and burn. Because it was each made up! Holmes had spun the pinprick thought retired of her ain fearfulness of needles. This was her fantasy, elevated into an invention that didn’t really exist.
So really tin she take sides herself now? What she tells Fielder, pinch an implacable condemnation that suggests a belief successful her ain communicative that’s thing short of monomaniacal, is that the instrumentality patented by Theranos, which she sold arsenic “the iPod of wellness care,” could, successful fact, big immoderate humor trial that existed. The only point they hadn’t rather worked retired was the chemistry that would spell into the tests. In different words, the instrumentality was based connected the projection of a exertion that didn’t beryllium yet. But the much Holmes talks to Fielder, the much he teases retired her unhinged rationale, which is: The instrumentality useful fine! We conscionable had to fig retired that pesky chemistry stuff! The unusual point is that Holmes has specified a firm mindset that she treats the chemistry stuff…that hadn’t been invented yet…as conscionable different glitchy mini problem that could easy beryllium solved. (Have the solution connected my table Monday morning!)
She believes her type of reality. Fielder, who is not taken successful by immoderate of this (his questions stay rigorous successful their skepticism), astatine 1 constituent gives vent to his impish broadside by showing Elizabeth and Billy the celebrated Abbott and Costello regular “Who’s connected First?” When it ends, he tries to get Holmes to explicate what the joke is (that “Who” is the first baseman’s name, but the sanction sounds for illustration a mobility — hence the routine’s glorious verbal slapstick). And she can’t do it; she can’t grasp the joke. It’s not conscionable that she lacks a consciousness of joke (though frankly, she benignant of does). It’s that she’s sewage the malignant narcissist’s request to person words mean only what she decrees them to mean. She can’t perceive immoderate different meaning. Hence: her instrumentality did “work,” and still does (it tin tally immoderate test!). That’s why she and Bobby, years aft her conviction, are still pitching Theranos to different investors (as if anyone would spell adjacent her). This is simply a highly rarefied level of illusion thinking.
Holmes says to Fielder that she’s ne'er told a dishonesty successful her life. Her full vibe is “sincerity.” (Though it’s besides 1 of passive-aggressive unbroken-eye-contact creepiness.) The instruction of her ineligible lawsuit isn’t conscionable that she was recovered blameworthy of defrauding investors, but that her faulty device, had it been put connected the market, would person wounded people. That’s why the existent mobility “You Can See Everything” is asking isn’t: Is she guilty? Rather, it’s: What makes group for illustration Elizabeth Holmes tick? (And really galore of them are retired there?) Fielder and Elizabeth and Bobby beryllium down to watch the 2022 Hulu miniseries “The Dropout,” which was based connected the case, pinch Amanda Seyfried giving a pointed capacity arsenic Holmes. Holmes suggests that the bid is simply a TV-movie crock. But is it?
The documentary’s first half ends pinch Holmes saying goodbye to her family and going disconnected to the minimum-security Bryan Prison successful Texas. The situation won’t let anyone to question and reply her, truthful that’s much aliases little the past we’ll spot of her. And we’ve beautiful overmuch gotten the skinny connected her, which is that she has a wall of denial opinionated betwixt herself and the truth, and an indifference to the harm she mightiness person caused, that borders connected the sociopathic. So what is location near to discover?
Plenty, it turns out. With Holmes retired of the picture, Fielder needs personification to prolong her presence. So he calls Amanda Seyfried, who sits and watches the segment we’ve conscionable seen of Holmes sitting and watching Seyfried represent her. Are you emotion the meta of it all? That sounds for illustration a stunt, but arsenic the documentary goes on, and Fielder creates transcripts of things that Holmes has spoken (including a telephone chat he has pinch her successful prison), who amended to publication the transcripts — to move this reality into theater, and by doing truthful move it backmost into reality — than Amanda Seyfried? She gives an progressively meticulous capacity arsenic Holmes, getting wrong her head, to the constituent that her acting is almost eerie successful its power. Seyfried moreover starts to sympathize pinch Holmes, astatine slightest erstwhile it comes to what a glowering aggro power freak her partner Bobby is. As Bobby continues to make himself accessible to the filmmakers, exposing his acheronian broadside astatine each turn, I was acrophobic the movie mightiness usage him to create a benignant of toxic excuse for what Holmes did.
But portion of the jaunty powerfulness of “You Can See Everything” is that the movie ne'er mounts an apologia for Elizabeth Holmes. Bobby whitethorn beryllium repugnant successful his cockiness, and successful the measurement he takes power of Holmes’ image, allowing the iconic photograph of her making the “OK” motion to beryllium utilized connected billboards, tweeting retired dispute tweets nether her name, and striking a woody pinch the A24 executives — yes, there’s a gathering pinch them successful the movie, astatine which constituent we’re either successful meta eden aliases hellhole — that will springiness him immoderate of the profits from the movie. Does Holmes cognize astir the deal? No. But she claims to want it that way. Her expansive assertion is that she never cared astir the money. And yet the money — the worth of her institution — became the very halfway of her identity. “You Can See Everything” overlaps reality, performance, deception, and intelligence illness, to the constituent that it brings you to the enigmatic abstraction wherever each those things meet.
English (US) · 
Indonesian (ID) · 
