Note: This post may contain spoilers.
The A24 (meta-) documentary You Can See Everything about Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the now-defunct health technology company Theranos, got the internet abuzz. If you watch it, you will see why. The feature is both thought-provoking and unusual, and the main subjects featured in it—Holmes and her partner Billy Evans—have the screen presence of highly-paid actors playing Holmes and Evans.
One of the criticisms made is that the film is inaccurate. One can see why some people think that. There is, for instance, a scene in the film in which Holmes and one of the directors, Nathan Fielder, debate the meaning of the word “can” in the expression “can run every test.” Holmes insists that the device she is showing to Fielder “can run every test.” Fielder suggests that Holmes is not using the word “can” in the usual way. (Note: In one sense of “can,” I can defeat the world chess champion at chess, namely, it is not physically impossible for me to move the pieces on the board so as to score a victory. But if I say I can defeat the world chess champion, you will take me to be saying something different and altogether false. It may also be that Holmes’ device can run every test in some such sense. That, of course, is not the sense that would have interested either customers or investors.) In another scene, Holmes is shown Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” comedy sketch, and she seems to either not get or pretend not to get the joke, which involves understanding that “Who,” “What,” and “I Don’t Know” are names of baseball players.
These and other scenes may leave viewers with the impression that Holmes simply doesn’t use words in the way most people do, and that perhaps, she is not so much a fraudster as a highly idiosyncratic language user with less-than-stellar communication skills.
Were that the message, the film would be, indeed, inaccurate. Holmes is not in prison because of miscommunication. She falsified financial records, diluted people’s blood with water and had the samples analyzed by real labs then claimed to have used the Theranos device, and she did other similar things.
Is the Film Intentionally Misleading or Simply Unconventional?
However, I am not inclined to view the film as misleading, because I don’t know what, if anything, it is asserting. A conventional documentary asserts—i.e., invites audiences to believe—various claims about the characters and events it depicts, and if the claims asserted are false, the documentary is, to that extent, inaccurate. But You Can See Everything is not a conventional documentary. For one thing, Fielder mentions at the very beginning that he is not “good at science things” and asks Holmes whether that was why she invited him and not someone else better equipped to ask questions about the technology. This can be taken as a disclaimer on his part: Viewer beware.
No less importantly, Fielder and Oppenheim could have spoken to other people better-versed in both the science and in the details of the case. This is what one might get in a conventional documentary. Fielder and Oppenheim do not do that either, and the choice seems deliberate. That too may be taken as a signal to the viewer that the filmmakers did not intend to explain “what really happened.”
One can argue, perhaps, that in engaging with Holmes in a discussion about the meaning of “can,” Fielder was deliberately introducing ambiguity to make the story more interesting. But I am not sure that’s true either. An alternative interpretation is this: Fielder wanted to see how far he could get with Holmes if he played on her turf and started from her own premises. Suppose she really did use the word “can” in an atypical way. Shouldn’t she have nonetheless anticipated that this would lead to a misunderstanding? As for the Abbott and Costello sketch, that may have been bait to see what Holmes would say about it. She can be seen laughing while watching it. That suggests she understood what’s funny. What would she say if asked? She denies she understood. The documentary does not assert that her denial is in good faith. An alternative interpretation is that we see Holmes seizing the opportunity and trying to pull the veil over our eyes while falling for Fielder’s trick.
I, for one, am very glad that Fielder and Oppenheim took the approach they took. The actual story has been covered previously, and more than once. The world doesn’t need another run-of-the-mill Holmes documentary, however accurate. What You Can See Everything offers, instead, is an attempt to penetrate what looks like Holmes’ façade. It does not succeed despite the fact that the team has full access for an extended period of time. It is a bit as though the lodgers with their cameras keep knocking on the door even though they are already inside the house. They never get behind the immaterial partition which separates them from the thoughts of their subjects. Just why that is is one of the themes of the film.
How Does Holmes Respond to the Filmmakers’ Attempts at Authentic Engagement?
In a widely viewed trailer, Holmes is heard saying to Fielder, “I am engaging with you as a human being” and “I am always being real.” It is really the filmmakers who seem to want to engage with Holmes as a human being, but they only get her to reflect their own intentions back at them. What Holmes’ own play was in all this remains a mystery.
The feature is unconventional—though, importantly, not in a way that’s parasitic on prior conventions, as when an “invisible” artwork seeks to thwart the expectation that artworks in general have some material bearer. The movie feels genuinely original. It surprises viewers without trying to trick them by leading them to expect one thing and giving them another. The work is exploratory, too. It doesn’t promise to deliver anything in particular—least of all, “the truth about Holmes”—but it delivers.
Precisely what it is that it delivers is not easy to say, but that’s part of its point—and its charm.
I would not call the film inaccurate. Of course, it isn’t accurate either. It is something else.
