My family and I went to see the mind-bending, hall of mirrors “documentary,” You Can See Everything, by the nonplussed wizard interviewer Nathan Fielder last weekend. It’s about a convicted tech start-up fraudster, Elizabeth Holmes, currently serving 11 years and change in federal prison for financial fraud concerning a tech start-up named Theranos. In keeping with the film, I am going to say almost nothing about its plot. I put the word “documentary” in quotes, because maybe more like literature, this “documentary” questions whether the endeavor of a “documentary” about the “truth” is even possible. The theme makes sense because the subject of the documentary (which by genre often involves a search for truth) is someone convicted of financial fraud who is not going to admit it and stop being who they are because someone is making a documentary.
Theranos was part of the technology boom and supposedly was involved in testing blood, but its device or devices did not work as advertised, and maybe did not even come close. There is one scene in the film where Nathan Fielder brings it out, and places it on a table, and asks her about it. It’s low key hilarious, because the device is an odd assembly of black electronic boxes and dozens of wires that together seem like a failed high school project. If this hodgepodge was shown in the 1980s classic, Back to the Future, it would make sense. I mean, if you walked into some LabCorp or Patient First for a flu test and saw this amalgamation, you’d walk out.
Nathan Fielder is the most poker-faced interviewer I have ever seen, including in any courtroom where I myself have practiced law, and this scene is telling and golden. He acts dumb when people answer his questions, but he’s likely calculating. As an aside, there are only two occasions in the film where he reveals a point of view; they too become part of the insight and doubt that dance together throughout. His placing them in the film, one in particular which I will leave unsaid, becomes part of the film’s alluring echoing mystery.
Back to this odd device – what she said about it was hilariously imbecilic. She mentions how it could download the “chemistry” from the Internet “cloud” as if this chemistry for diseases is akin to plug and play tech. Of course, it couldn’t, and very likely, this so-called chemistry does not even exist for the ranging array required. The absurd comedy of the interview was quiet. It combined her sincere, doe-eyed delivery with Fielder’s poker-faced, nonplussed acceptance of her explanation. This deep comedy is like the bottom of a river where, at the top. we have the splashes of gags we often called comedy and improv.
Now, I know very little about the underlining facts of her case, and still don’t. There’s just too much to read these days. but the U.S. Justice Department has a summary online here. You don’t need to know much about her to reap reward from this film, but I do think it helps and wish I read more in advance. According to a DOJ press release linked here, the company used fake logos on stationary to publicize her device had been vetted and tested by reputable medical or pharmaceutical giants; it had not. The creation of fake documents often is good evidence of lack of mistake in my experience, and cannot be easily explained away as . . . whoops!
The film opens with almost no context about her past and this company, including the above. You Can See Everything invites us to watch a film about performance, acting, sincerity, family, money, fame, invention, and relationships. This total lack of framing tells us much about the film’s intent. Likewise, the film title is ironic because without context, what one sees can convey an inaccurate message, or, who knows what it conveys?
Further Discussion:
So, what to make of the opening half hour or hour with her and her family before the film continues once she’s in prison? Well, today I was thinking about the famous Hannah Arendt concept of the “banality of evil.” It’s a portrait of banal fraud that is emblematic of our times, portrayed at home where everything seems normal.
It’s pretty amazing that companies like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Apple are the most valuable companies in the world, next to the emerging generation of companies developing artificial intelligence. I am writing this blog on a computer, broadcast via the Internet, which depend on companies like this. Yet, how many more electronic “documents,” electronic messages, and storehouses of data do we need? We’d all cry a river if Microsoft shut down. We’d have less data if the computing systems collapsed. But in 48 hours or so, we’d adjust. Maybe there would a loss of worldwide photos on our phones if they all went blank, but without portable phones, the world would continue. It really begs the question, what’s being sold or has been sold?
Final Comment:
I could say more, but I will save it for another time. However as Robert Frost said, “knowing how way leads on to way,” I may as well add it here now.
Elon Musk brought Twitter for forty four billion dollars in 2022, a company reported to have never earned a profit at that time. The purchase price likely was mostly lender financing, backed by collateral from his other companies, so “purchase’ in this sense is a euphemism for the financial engineering that gave him control and ownership. By media reports today, he’s exponentially wealthier. So, this purchase likely helped. The financial optics of the deal remain curious. What’s clear is he’s purchased a mass communication system. He tweets a lot. He renamed it and that too broadcast his fame and power. Through it, he purchased influence and power, which he appears to use to his benefit, including to promote his other companies. So, the valuation may be a hoax, in a way, at least financially. However, the power is real. It’s having an impact.
Back to the film, kudos. I don’t think I’ve spoiled much. It’s not forgotten soon. Highly recommended.
Stay free, stay funky, stay fresh.
Cheers,
G. H. Mosson
Maryland, USA
