Director: Nathan Fielder, Lance Oppenheim
Cast: Nathan Fielder, Elizabeth Holmes, Billy Evans… and Amanda Seyfried*
Have I Seen It Before: Has anyone? Has anyone seen anything like that?
Did I Like It: For the past few weeks, people who have seen it have been describing it like it defied genre, and may have defied description. Just as I was about to go into the film, somebody asked me if I had seen it yet, and it increasingly grew difficult for us to talk about the possibility of the film.
Surely, there is nothing new under the sun. Every film can be described to those who have not seen it before.
Then I saw it myself.
I come home, and inside of an hour, I try to explain the movie to Lora, and then to my parents during our weekly telephone call…
…and I’ve got nothing. Yes, it is a documentary. Yes, it is a dramatic re-enactment. Sometimes it is one thing in direct conflict with the other, and eve nother times it is one of those things when it probably has no sensible claim to being that thing.
I’m already all turned around. A full day after seeing the film, and I’m still putting it all together in my head. Do I believe Elizabeth Holmes intentionally defrauded people? Do I believe she can’t—in a million years—see her way clear to understanding how this has become the course of her? Do I believe that this was all a misunderstanding? Do I believe she is the single most manipulated person of our times? Do I believe she is the single most manipulative person of our times?
Is it possible to believe all of those things simultaneously? Maybe I’ll have to get back to you on that.
As a matter of form, one might make a knee-jerk reaction that Fielder has—in true Fielder form—possibly made himself too much a part of the documentary, but he’s taken that to an appropriately absurd level. The line that ought to separate film from filmmaker is surely debatable, but once the filmmaker shares a bed with his subjects (while watching a docudrama about one of the subjects) we can all agree that the line has been crossed, even if I’m prepared to say that Fielder is well aware of what he is doing, and there is likely not a single moment in the film that is anything less than intentional. That includes the moment of full-frontal nudity that was long rumored, comes out of nowhere, and doesn’t really seem to have anything to do with the rest of the film.
Let’s talk about that penis, while we’re at it**. It’s presented—and I’m failing to come up with any better word—and then disappears. Is there any way to think of this as anything other than a performance? Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans*** would insist it isn’t, but that’s the whole point.
This review has already gone on too long. You want to really talk about this? You’re really just going to have to see it for yourself.
*Yep. We’re already into spoiler territory.
**And other sentences I never thought I would write.
***Find me two characters in film who spend less time blinking. I’ll wait.