❌

Reading view

β€˜I’m always being real’: what on earth persuades disgraced people like Elizabeth Holmes to let the cameras in?

With You Can See Everything, Holmes joins other such high-profile subjects as Lance Armstrong, Imelda Marcos and Anthony Weiner to allow film-makers to document their lives. But do they ever come out well?

In You Can See Everything, convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes invites film-makers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim into her home in a supposed act of β€œradical transparency”. Holmes is filmed, along with her partner, Billy Evans, and their two young children, in the weeks before starting a prison sentence for defrauding Theranos investors. β€œThe best way for people to see who she is,” Evans says, β€œis to give as much access as possible into our daily lives”. It may also be the best way to market β€œTheranos 2.0”, which the couple are working on during filming. But the documentary questions whether Holmes is presenting her authentic self or a manufactured persona. Fielder speaks for the audience when he asks Holmes in a tense exchange whether she’s β€œbeing real” with him. β€œI’m always being real,” she says.

That question of authenticity is at the heart of documentary film-making. You Can See Everything is as much about the ambiguous relationship between film-maker and subject as it is about Holmes herself. There is often a power struggle over narrative control in documentaries, with both sides of the dynamic wanting different outcomes from the final film. Watching You Can See Everything inevitably prompts the question: why would Holmes, days before she heads to jail, invite the scrutiny of a film crew?

Continue reading...

Β© Photograph: Courtesy of A24

Β© Photograph: Courtesy of A24

Β© Photograph: Courtesy of A24

  •  
❌