How the Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything” is deceiving

This actually says nothing at all about how the documentary deceives you. It simply claims that it does, with no evidence provided. This basically a clickbait headline stretched out to blog post size. Total garbage, IMO.

Nathan Fielder is pretty well-known for his work in The Rehearsal and Nathan for You. Nathan for You resides in the docu-comedy genre, where you take advantage of real people's reactions to absurd situations for comedic effect. Other examples are things like Kitchen Nightmares (where Gordon Ramsey goes into real restaurants and "fixes" them). It's a well-done version of the idea, but not revolutionary IMO.

The Rehearsal, however, extends the idea further. In that show, he helps real people "rehearse" for hard conversations. It involves Fielder building extravagant sets and having absurdly detailed set-ups with multiple actors, then running the conversation multiple times. What makes this "different" is that now the real person is partially in on it? Like, they know that they're on a set. They know that this is a simulation. So the show is more "meta" than previous entries in the genre, opening up other avenues for humour.

I say this because You Can See Everything is best understood as a further extension of those projects. Even the name indicates this, because by nature of a documentary, you can't see everything. You have a real person in Elizabeth Holmes, being interviewed by a person in Fielder that's known for his stunts taking advantage of "real people," where he watches fictionalized versions of Holmes with Holmes herself? Viewed in light of his previous projects, this feels like an extension of them.

But even with that, I think the setup does allow you to see something real in Holmes. She also knows how people "want" to see her! So there's also a sort of meta-narrative there too, where you know Holmes is on her best behavior to try and dispel the narrative from those fictionalized TV characterizations. The fact that she comes off poorly in the documentary says something, even accounting for the fact that Fielder is trying to sell a narrative.

It's a real mind game, but I think it's representative of Holmes because of that. She is going to jail for a fraud that amounts to a similar sort of mind game, she agrees to a documentary to show herself differently, but that documentary is also a mind game. Wild stuff.

No one including my wife was interested in seeing it so I went by myself. It was long, but interesting. The author hits the nail on the head:

“You sit there believing you’re watching a documentary about a woman who deceived the world, only to discover that you’re also watching a demonstration of how easy it is to deceive you.”

I couldn’t agree more.

I saw the movie Friday night. It is a mind job. You'll walk away with more questions than answers.

Without spoiling the movie, it's possible for people to be multiple things at once. That doesn't excuse what Elizabeth Holmes did or explain what others in her circle may be guilty of. The movie is a wild ride.

I haven’t seen the Holmes movie, but this article reminded me of Orson Welles’ F for Fake. An amazing movie that plays with some similar ideas in a pseudo-documentary format.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_for_Fake

I highly recommend it!

It's a worthy movie, plays with form, true to Fielder's style.

However I strongly disagree with the author of this post. The one thing it does wrong is under-emphasizes how much hard evidence there is the Holmes personally did serious crimes:

1. Concealed use of competitor's machines since she knew there machines weren't capable.

2. Fabricated military contracts and endorsements.

3. Knowingly presented widely inflated revenue projections to investors.

4. Explicitly admitted in court to forging reports using the letterhead and logos of major pharmaceutical companies without their permission

5. There's text messages, internal emails, and firsthand whistleblower testimony—proving that Elizabeth Holmes and her chief operating officer, Sunny Balwani, orchestrated a ruthless campaign to silence anyone who tried to expose the fraud.

If anything the movie tries to let Holmes dupe you into forgetting this. Frankly the fact that SHE invited NATHAN to film this makes me think she was trying to use her baby as a way to garner sympathy and whitewash her life (presumably not really understanding his work).

I just watched this movie tonight and it's one of those where I feel like everyone else saw a different film. For me it was too little butter spread over too much bread. All the interesting parts of the Holmes/Theranos story have been explored, so all that's left is her personal life with her new partner who's also a weirdo.

At best I can say that it makes you think about things like deceit and honesty/accuracy in media, but it definitely didn't blow my mind like it apparently did for this author. After 3 hours I was just exhausted from watching these peoples' tortuous attempts to avoid giving a direct answer to any question.

This article falls into the same trap, I dunno what to call them, artsy-upper-class-society-and-film reviewers often do; writing vague yet meaningful-sounding things about the obvious subtext of a movie as if it was a revelation, yet without any specific observations about it.

Yes, this is a documentary about a person. And how the documentary is presented will color your perspective of the person. This should (hopefully) be apparent to anyone who's watched a documentary about a person before.

But how does it do it? What tools does it use to that effect? I appreciate that this film remains relatively neutral/ambiguous, but what makes this unique from other documentaries that deal with ambiguous subject matter?

I don't think there is any magic sauce to this movie. I saw it yesterday, and do agree (spoilers ahead) there are three acts: deception, sympathetic, puppeteer. I feel though that this article treats the movie as if its some sort of hypnosis; it's not. Its a very well put together movie that makes you question everything thats happening. I and others came out of it largely questioning:

A. Is she truly the most manipulative person we've ever seen

B. Largely oblivious to what's happening around her

and not:

- Is she guilty

This movie I would say does not answer those questions, nor do I think seeks to.

My take away, same as from Martha Stewart documentary, is that the law goes for you much harder if you are a woman. Musks or the world can deceive and produce vaporware for decades but God forbid you are a woman that's deceiving other men. A "b*tch hunt" somebody called it in Martha Stewart doc.

It won't deceive me, I went to one of Canada's top business schools and got really good grades.

Why would the documentary be deceiving you? The documentary has no reason to deceive you. The document is just trying to reach out to you and connect with you as a person. Why would it be deceiving you? It has no reason to be deceiving you.

Checked her Twitter account yesterday (managed by her husband)

She is MAGA. That's enought to know about the topic.

The media and seemingly random persons like this stanning her is extremely weird.

The documentary aside, if she hadn't been caught for the fraud, I wonder how many of us (myself included) would be singing her praises. I wonder how many people are operating like she did right now.

It is fascinating to see so many comments defending Holmes. Are these even real people?

Every documentary is inevitably deceiving; the only difference is whether the author tries to hide it.

> Very early on, I worked out that one of the most stupid things that they do on television is these things called cutaways or what used to be called “noddies” where, when you cut an interview with someone, you insert a noddy of the reporter looking noddingly at the interviewee to disguise the cut.

> I would never do that. I just cut and you can see what I’m doing, that I am actually cutting this person, or I will use music to push my argument.

> I mean, I have arguments and I have stories. That’s what television journalism has and you can either dress it up as “this is the absolute truth” or you can dress it up with me by saying “look, I’m telling you a story, all this is true but have you thought that it could be like this?” to provoke you.

> And of course I want people to agree with me because, you know, all human beings will, but I understand that my job is to push and good journalism should do that especially at a time of uncertainty.

> At the present moment, to go back to my original point, you know what you’re going to get with most journalism. So therefore you sort of switch off and you go “oh yeah, it’s a climate change film”. “Oh yeah, it’s a ‘bankers have done something ever bad’ again.” Therefore, you don’t look.

> It’s like if you’re showing a picture of the Mona Lisa. You don’t look at it. You just look at it as a pattern. You go, “oh, that’s the Mona Lisa”. I don’t know when I last looked at the Mona Lisa. I don’t think I ever have, because it’s a thing. And so much of journalism is a thing now.

— Adam Curtis

> We form an emotional impression first, then we build a belief around it, and then we go looking for facts that support it. This is my theory as to why we’re so divided in this country.

While this is true, the reason we are much more divided country than in the past is that today's tech actively amplifies this. You can always find the news to support your belief, and social networks are tuned to reinforce it. This is a vicious circle - the more we are divided, the more division is propageted.

>An entire theater full of grown adults was falling for it. At one point, people were shouting so loudly at the screen that I couldn’t hear the dialogue. I heard a woman yell, “Criminal!” — and it wasn’t directed at Elizabeth Holmes. I’ve never experienced anything like that in a movie theater. It was emotion, and it was visceral.

Is this a parody lol?

Maybe when I read about "cinemas are a bad experience nowadays" on american sites (reddit, HN) they mean this but I always felt that they are deceiving me.

Maybe I'm just too Asian-European because I never experienced that in any European or Far East Asian cinemas.

Everything you watch, documentary and narrative alike, attempts to shape your understanding of events through the director's lens.

This article is devoid of content

The article seems to be amazed that movies can manipulate your emotions.

I watched this film last night. It was very unique and not like anything I have seen before.

It's a pretty disorienting film, and I think that is part of the point. We're living in an age where presentation matters far more than substance.

I wish Werner Herzog made this film. He has the ability to just let people speak their mind but also don't letting them off the hook either.

There was a movie, maybe on Netflix, about Holmes not too long ago. I was surprised to see this movie coming out because I thought that one was pretty well done and covered everything this movie might (I have not seen this one).

Has anyone else seen both and can they comment on the differences?

This article is a bit too desperate to connect the subject matter to the medium.

It’s such a good movie. Go with a friend and you can spend hours picking apart the layers.

“ She’s in prison because a jury found that she knowingly misled investors who poured more than $700 million into the startup. That’s a significant distinction, but as a society, we don’t love nuance” Ok she’s still a fraud what am I missing

Ok while I agree with the substance of the article I just can't help myself:

>me, “So what did you think?” And I just responded with, “Forget Elizabeth Holmes.

Sigh. Why do we need to forget her?

>I heard a woman yell, “Criminal!”

In the theater? I'll take things that never happened for 500, Alex

>Think about Elizabeth Holmes

Who? We already forgot her

I would have expected the HN crowd to be more accepting of the meta-level strange loop shenanigans of Nathan Hofstadter I mean Fielder.

"""How much of your opinion of her comes from the facts of her criminal case & how much comes from the images and/or videos and/or TV dramas you’ve seen over the years?"""

There is a book by the WSJ reporter that uncovered the lies carrying the startup Theranos ("Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup" by John Carreyrou) and led to its downfall.

There is a well-produced podcast ("The Dropout" by ABC News/ABC Audio) that also reveals the dichotomy between investor harm and patient harm and it was originally completed before the criminal trial.

Would recommend those if someone is interested in the paths of the people involved in Theranos, and how they managed to carry on the deceptions.

Slightly off-topic, but does anyone know why A24 has not released this movie at the same time across different regions? It's really frustrating seeing so much discussion about the movie but not being able to actually see it until the end of November in the UK.

>> It definitely didn't blow my mind like it apparently did for this author.

It did for the author because this is a service she provides. To even suggest that Elizabeth Holmes didn't really harm anyone because she in prison for investor fraud, and then have the nerve to call that distinction "nuance", is absurd.

Theranos generated around 7.8 million test results for Arizona consumers alone. Of those, roughly 834,000 had to be voided or corrected. These were real people getting medical information they relied on. Some received terrifying and incorrect indications of prostate cancer. Pregnant women received results suggesting they were miscarrying when they weren't.

It's like claiming a blood bank supervisor didn't put patients at risk by giving them incompatible blood transfusions, simply because the state only managed to prosecute them for pirating the inventory software they were using.

She did it before for Paul Logan and Anthony Scaramucci, and now is softening the road for Elizabeth Holmes pardon.

She did the same in her newsletter for Logan Paul when he was trying to move beyond his image as a toxic YouTube prankster, and spent months embedded with him and his brother.

Then did the same for Anthony Scaramucci, when he had to rebuild his credibility in the investment world, as his bitcoin hedge fund was about to go nowhere. Pompliano opens with his fascination with astrology. Astrology!

Call monsters what they are. The victims deserve it.

This reads like a high schooler discovering that film can manipulate you, but doesn't go any further than that.

"We like to believe that we form our opinions by gathering evidence, weighing facts, and arriving at reasonable conclusions. Be for real. No we do not."

She speaks for herself. The author then doesn't bring up a single fact, piece of evidence, or anything else besides just restating the pedestrian premise a few times. I don't share her inability to study a topic in-depth, come to a conclusion or challenge my previously held beliefs, and then pass judgment while attaching a calibrated degree of certainty to the soundness of my conviction.

I haven't watched the movie yet. I've read the book too. I want to read the book and then watch the movie.

The fact that it is documentary, and is being marketed along the lines of a block-buster on X with memes should have raised eye-brows. There are lot of genuinely good documentaries out there, they all are left to be discovered, and people discover them. But this one, was/is being marketed as must-watch documentary, and with no reference to the book bad blood?

For building startup, you need a story on the person who is going on the front. Example he/she from top university, worked in a big company. That is sufficient to build something with zero revenue and sell it for billions.

You can just read Bad Blood, too, and skip the movie / hyperbole/ whatever

>At one point, people were shouting so loudly at the screen that I couldn’t hear the dialogue. I heard a woman yell, “Criminal!”

I’m not sure this is some data point that supports the article.

The article seems to indicate that the film is some special event in the idea of deception, but i honestly couldn’t figure out how exactly. They just describe conflicts that might occur with any film….

Documentaries are compelling, but they are the lowest-signal and most manipulative forms of rhetoric. Heavily biased & one sided, emotionally manipulative. They impose an uncritical point of view because of the first-person perspective (the camera puts the viewer in the room).

I include citizen footage in this as well. Even un-edited "raw" footage is shot from a single perspective, and promoted with an agenda.

A movie can't be objective -- it is told from the Director & DP's point of view. Camera perspective imposes the viewer's perspective. And documentary filmmakers are never experts on the subject matter. They are entertainers.

This has a very interesting way of showing it to you, how easy it is to deceive us. What we see is what er believe in, but it can be very much easily used to exploit us.

It's fascinating to me that the upper classes find Holmes interesting. In the working class world I grew up in, chicks like her are a dime a dozen and can usually be found at Grateful Dead tribute concerts espousing the benefits of crystals and channeling her alien guide who she discovered while chanting an invented baby talk language high on molly and nitrous oxide.

I really want to see the movie, sadly it is not yet know when the film is gonna release in German theaters. Actually, I am seriously considering starting my own film distribution and acquiring the rights to this film and a couple others. I would do straight to theater release, ov-only, no subtitles, no fluff.

I'm surprised anyone would even assume there is a chance a Nathan Fielder "documentary" might not be deceiving. Has it gotten so bad that people consider this real reporting now?

Maybe this question is related to polls showing a significant percentage of Americans considering the likes of Colbert, Stewart, and John Oliver trustworthy news reporters btw.

So many comments about Holmes, I think, are missing the point. This isn't about Holmes, and neither, IMO, is the article. Like all things Nathan Fielder does, this is a movie by Nathan for Nathan. Elizabeth Holmes is just used, in every sense of the word, as a prop.

The article was written by someone who's never seen any of Nathan's other work and is apparently blown away by his skill at and unquenchable fetish for using and deceiving people. Yeah, that's his whole thing. Congrats, you just watched a documentary about psychopaths.

“Local woman discovers Nathan For You”

What was his movie review when he saw Ocean's 11? This won't happen in real life? It's entertainment, get over it.

>only to discover that you’re also watching a demonstration of how easy it is to deceive you

Is this your first time encountering a Nathan joint?

if I'm being honest with myself, I doubt I will ever watch this movie - I was very interested in theranos when it looked like a real technology, but once it turned out it was just another scam in an industry rife with them the whole thing just felt boring and grubby. the review, on the other hand, was a superb piece of writing, and I'm glad to have read it.

Has this person never seen Rashomon? Or any of the other films (even documentaries) that cleverly use different perspectives? Seems a bit breathless.