A Rule of Thumb that’s worked for me pretty well so far is: I do not expect the wealthy and powerful to do the right thing1. I also do not expect Nathan Fielder to not have a laugh at our expense. An hour after watching this, I put those two together for some semblance of clarity.
This is a con. This is not a documentary in the earnest sense of what a Documentary ought to be or wants to be. Might have traces of Documentary in the first 30 minutes (it’s about 3 hours long) but that fizzles away pretty quickly. It’s a meditation over deception and manipulation and they’re all in on it. Come to think of it, we’re complicit in our voyeurism and schadenfreude. But they’re all having a laugh at you thinking (1) you’re above it all, or (2) consider yourself a mere passive, unattached, bemused observer, or, and this is the laughable bit, (3) you think you understand the absurdities they’ve engineered2. The subject and filmmakers are in the business of making people believe things and are pretty good at this. They are completely in control of everything you see and think you know.
This is a fantastic movie3. Three hours and my attention didn’t sway once. The writing, music, and cinematography were superlative. It’s the best thing I’ve seen this year and I’ll think about it for a while. I think it would’ve been a wonderful short series and wonder if it started that way. It demands every bit of your attention and is best enjoyed in theaters (I saw it at the AMC in Harlem.)
It’s ripe for repeated viewings and is best enjoyed as it is. “Plans within plans within plans” and retellings within retellings within retellings. Consider this: there’s Holmes herself, who she is in front of a camera, whom she has scripted herself to be in this movie, Amanda Seyfried playing Holmes, Fielder’s recollections of Holmes, Billy’s idea of who she is and what she wants in absentia, and an AI version of Holmes (of course.) All the extreme closeups of all representations seemed like taunts: which one do you think is authentic? Can you or will you even know? What do you think of what you know? And before any one reading can settle, it’s time for a 100ft wave of the next. It’s all very lovely and very well done.
But there is no need to be in any confusion about The Truth after watching this mind-bender. Holmes et al lied about their tech and are paying the price of hoodwinking and disappointing a lot of the wrong people: the wealthy and powerful. She’s hardly the first person with an ill-formed idea and/or vaporware4. She’d be a maverick and wildchild visionary (perhaps with an ankle-bracelet) if she’d swindled the hoi polloi. She’d have raised enough capital from the usual VCs for ventures Two and Three by now. You do not build a company like Theranos if you’re merely a smart and ambitious pollyanna who Thinks Different™ but are not part of the elite circles that enable and incentivize the kind of blind and misinformed ambition and resultant behavior she exhibited5 for a good ROI.
Masterpiece of filmmaking. “Monument to Love” indeed. Holmes’ release date is February 22, 2030.
And not because I think they’re uniformly awful people.↩︎
God bless you if you’ve never been deceived or manipulated; if you’re curious about what these may feel like, this is the thing to watch.↩︎
I don’t know what to call it but it’s not a documentary and I’m sticking with ‘movie’.↩︎
Although bullshitting in her domain, healthcare, means that shitty products can harm people.↩︎
Which we are led to believe was a result of coercion and manipulation.↩︎