In a world where Lindsay Clancy can inspire an onslaught of sympathetic voyeuristic fascination, why not Elizabeth Holmes? Earlier tonight, the screening of an unannounced mystery movie at the Telluride Film Festival generated every bit as much pre-screening buzz as any of the big movies programmed here. And when the film was revealed to be “You Can See Everything,” a 174-minute documentary, co-directed by the cult comedian Nathan Fielder, about Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of Theranos who is now serving an 11-year prison sentence after being convicted of defrauding her investors, the sensation of “WTF? I’ve got to watch this!” did not subside as the movie went on. It only intensified.
She believes her version of reality. But Fielder, who is not taken in by any of this (his questions remain rigorous in their skepticism), at one point gives vent to his impish side by showing Elizabeth and Billy the famous Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on First?” When it ends, he tries to get Holmes to explain what the joke is (that “Who” is the first baseman’s name, but the name sounds like a question — hence the routine’s glorious verbal slapstick). And she can’t do it; she can’t grasp the joke. It’s not just that she lacks a sense of humor (though frankly, she kind of does). It’s that she’s got the malignant narcissist’s need to have words mean only what she decrees them to mean. She can’t hear any other meaning. Hence: her device did “work,” and still does (it can run any test!). That’s why she and Bobby, years after her conviction, are still pitching Theranos to other investors (as if anyone would go near her). This is a highly rarefied level of delusional thinking.
The documentary’s first half ends with Holmes saying goodbye to her family and going off to the minimum-security Bryan Prison in Texas. The prison won’t allow anyone to interview her, so that’s more or less the last we’ll see of her. And we’ve pretty much gotten the skinny on her, which is that she has a brick wall standing between herself and the truth, and an indifference to the harm she might have caused, that borders on the sociopathic. So what is there left to discover?
But part of the jaunty power of “You Can See Everything” is that the film never mounts an apologia for Elizabeth Holmes. Bobby may be repugnant in his cockiness, and in the way he takes control of Holmes’ image, allowing the iconic photograph of her making the “OK” sign to be used on billboards, tweeting out hostile tweets under her name, and striking a deal with the A24 executives — yes, there’s a meeting with them in the movie, at which point we’re either in meta heaven or hell — that will give him some of the profits from the movie. Does Holmes know about the deal? No. But she claims to want it that way. Her grand assertion is that she never cared about the money. And yet the money — the value of her company — became the very core of her identity. “You Can See Everything” overlaps reality, performance, deception, and mental illness, and by the end it brings you to the enigmatic space where every one of those things meet.
