I’ve never had enough of an interest in Elizabeth Holmes — the now-imprisoned former CEO of the defunct medical device company known as Theranos — to even look into her backstory.
At some point, I even started following her on X, for reasons I can’t recall. At another point, her account interacted with mine. I was given to understand that she was operating her account by proxy through family members.
I found out this week that I was misinformed.
Her longtime boyfriend, Billy Evans, is apparently the guy who runs that account.
How do I know? Because I’ve now watched a movie about her life. Twice in one week.
When I saw this trailer for a new film about Holmes by Canadian comedian turned documentarian Nathan Fielder, I was so intrigued, I realized I had to go see the movie:
It’s a three-hour experience — and again, a documentary — but it may actually be the most riveting film I’ve ever seen.
First of all, it’s gorgeous. The filming, the editing, and the color grading are all magnificent — as is the score, with deep, suspenseful riffs that carry a heavy load throughout the runtime.
But it’s not just a movie about a woman who is about to be separated from her small children as she goes to prison for defrauding investors. It’s a story within a story. It’s an examination of unreliable narrators — including the documentarian himself — and the way we have a tendency to think we can construct an accurate understanding of a person from a sufficiently detailed model of their life.
It’s about the magic of perception, too.
It’s about narratives that overpower facts.
It’s such a perfect film for our time that I don’t think it could have worked nearly this well at any other. Last time I checked, it’s the #1 movie in America right now, even though it’s currently playing in fewer than 1,000 theaters.
So, I did something I never do, and I insisted that Kale Zelden go and see the movie.
He was resisting. He had other things going on. I told him that the universe dropped this in our laps, and we had to talk about it on Monitoring the Situation this week.
So he went. And before he was even done, I was receiving messages like:
“Omg omg.”
“I’m going to explode.”
“That was a breathtaking wrinkle.”
I saw it again the same day he saw it for the first time, so I could try to deconstruct the magic tricks and discuss it cogently on the show.
Which is exactly what we did.
We did our best to be spoiler-free, but conceptually, certain things we said could frame your perception going in if you’re planning to see it.
But if you’re a cinephile at all, or someone fascinated by human psychology, by the power of story, by the ways in which we deceive ourselves and others…I can’t recommend it strongly enough.
(There is a scene of nonsexual male nudity for about ten seconds in the film, so if that kind of thing would keep you from the theater, you’ve been warned.)
Without further ado, I present to you our discussion of You Can See Everything, the power of narrative, managed reality, and more:
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