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United States: Strategic developments in Telluride
We have seen it all? One of the leaders in the American box office for several weeks has been "You Can See Everything," a three-hour documentary film about the California fraudster Elizabeth Holmes and her final days before imprisonment. Critics call the film an experimental thriller and compare it to Orson Welles' legendary "F for Fake," and the studio A24 is already planning to nominate it for an "Oscar" in nine categories. We analyze what makes the formula of "You Can See Everything" unique and why, despite all the "buts," it is a true breath of fresh air for a genre that is currently experiencing a deep crisis. "You Can See Everything" by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim has generated unprecedented excitement for documentary cinema. Since its premiere, which took place on September 6 as part of a secret screening at the Telluride Festival in Colorado, the film has been accompanied by an atmosphere of mystery: the studio did not disclose plot details, and viewers maintained a "silence mode" on social media until the last moment to avoid spoiling the surprise for anyone. Its ratings broke online portal records and, in the middle of its theatrical run, which is currently limited to North America, stood at 4.6 on Letterbox, 9.2 on IMDB, and an almost unanimous 97% on Metacritic YouTube studio A24 In professional circles, the film was called perhaps the most significant cinematic event of the year, recognizing it as an obvious contender for an Oscar in the "best documentary film" nomination. The word-of-mouth effect also worked. Reels with large queues and sold-out shows began to spread on social media, and PostTrek polls showed that more than 90% of viewers who saw the film would unconditionally recommend it to their friends. As a result, in its opening weekend with a modest budget of $7 million, the indie film managed to earn over $15 million If it manages to repeat a similar result in the global box office, which for most European countries is scheduled for November-December, including November 19 for Russia, it will undoubtedly be not the last record.The reason for such a phenomenal success lies not only in the concise advertising campaign, which skillfully heated up demand on social media and limited supply in cinemas, but also in the scandalous biography of the main character, Elizabeth Holmes In 2003, she founded Theranos, a healthcare startup that promised to develop a technology for comprehensive medical analyses using just a few drops of blood. After an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, which revealed the inadequacy of this technology, and numerous lawsuits, the company, with an estimated valuation of almost $10 billion, was liquidated. In 2022, a jury found its founder guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud and deceiving investors, and later the court sentenced her to 11 years in prison.The scandalous story of the Californian fraudster has inspired not one book or film One of the most famous is the mini-series "The Dropout" (Hulu, 2022). For it, actress Amanda Seyfried, who played Elizabeth, received an Emmy award.But neither the books nor the films offered an exhaustive psychological portrait of Holmes or had the main thing Elizabeth herself initiated this idea: she did not admit guilt and decided that "radical transparency" was the only proof that could justify her to the whole world. A month before the start of her prison sentence, she and her partner Billy Evans invited a film crew to their home to document their daily lives and clear Elizabeth's name from the sensational scandal, which is called the biggest in the history of Silicon Valley.The main guide into the world of Elizabeth and Billy is Nathan Fielder, one of the film's co-authors, known for the comedic docu-reality shows "Nathan for You" (2013) and "The Rehearsal" (2022). In his projects, he often changes personalities, manipulates characters, and openly deceives them, demonstrating the complex nature of human thought and blurring the line between reality and staging. The quirky comedian, an expert in manipulation and on-camera deception, tries to expose a person who received a real prison sentence for it. This ironic formula is a significant part of the success of "You Can See Everything."The second director, who remained mostly behind the scenes, was Lance Oppenheim, author of the recent live-action debut "Primetime" with Robert Pattinson. Together with his long-time cinematographer David Bolen, Oppenheim creates a richly anxious visual style, no less meticulous than the carefully staged scenes of fiction films. The film is filled with claustrophobic close-ups, capturing every smirk at the corners of the lips, but it does not neglect wide shots either Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder. Photo: Chris Maggio / A24Holmes herself is convinced of her innocence and believes that the press and mass culture have distorted her words for years, deliberately painting her as a caricatured swindler. A telling episode is a fragment of her interview with The New York Times, in which, according to Holmes, the authors changed only one word to create the impression that she consciously misled the public. The question of whether journalists actually twisted the accused's words runs like a red thread through the entire fabric of the film and is repeatedly returned to in conversations between the characters. In any case, Elizabeth is confident that she has never lied, especially for personal gain.Heart-to-heart conversations are Fielder's favorite technique, honed over years of working as a shameless interviewer. He learns the circumstances of Elizabeth and Billy's acquaintance Elizabeth Holmes. Photo: A24Evans, Elizabeth's partner, with whom she is raising two children and creating Theranos 2.0, turns out to be a more compliant and eloquent storyteller. He is convinced that no one knows who Elizabeth really is: after all, according to him, he knows her better than anyone, even better than Elizabeth herself. Over time, his true motive becomes clear It should be noted: I went to see the film knowing nothing about Holmes or the scandal surrounding her company. For such a viewer, "You Can See Everything" is seen as first-hand testimony, as a platform for public confession arranged by the heroine herself. Because of this, the film, at least its first part, is difficult to accuse of hypocrisy. And, according to the laws of the documentary genre, all words spoken during this confession can be and will be used against the characters in the court of public opinion, so in the interest of all participants Here lies the comical and at the same time frightening circumstance of the picture: seemingly sincere interlocutors with seemingly sincere intentions cannot understand each other, and only one side sees this as a problem.To avoid being unsubstantiated, Fielder decides to show his interlocutors a performance by the duo Abbott and Costello. In their humorous sketches, linguistic paradox constitutes the essence of the comedic formula. In the film, however, it becomes an analogy that has to be explained on the fingers. But even then, Elizabeth, again, with utmost sincerity, does not understand what Fielder means, presenting the situation in an absurdist spirit of a Kafkaesque interpretation. A joke explained is an absurdity.In the end, neither radical transparency, nor a month of intense communication, nor Nathan himself, is enough to "crack" Elizabeth. Therefore, the show continues even after the start of her prison sentence, and in all respects encompasses more than what is stated in its description.Elizabeth Holmes. Photo: A24The almost three-hour, at times tedious, but truly captivating journey turns into a wandering in a labyrinth of curved mirrors. Together with Nathan, it takes us far beyond the horizon of conventional ideas about sincerity and self-deception Perhaps the only significant flaw of "You Can See Everything" lies in its emphasis on entertainment. For television, this is an acceptable and even necessary condition, but in a feature film, it rather constrains the authors. Because of this, it seems that the film stops halfway The film received rave reviews from journalists and critics, who are already predicting its triumph at the Oscars and ranking it alongside the immortal classics of documentary cinema. And the comparison with Welles' film is not unfounded here.Indeed, "You Can See Everything" exists within a pressing and inexhaustible theme that has concerned every filmmaker since the days of Dziga Vertov's "Kino-Pravda": the problem of the authenticity of a screen work and its identification with reality.Does a documentary film happen in reality? Can we trust it? These questions are the cornerstone of modern popular documentary filmmaking, which, according to researchers, in the era of financial and information monopoly of streaming services and AI corporations, has ceased to be a tool for searching for complex truth and has shifted its priorities to entertainment and commercial success. Examples include the popularity of the true-crime genre, humorous television shows, glossy PR docs, and biopics dedicated to the "real" lives of celebrities. All of them claim screen authenticity, while not shying away from manipulation, distortion, and violations of ethical norms.Unintentionally, I have just described the main components of "You Can See Everything." But unlike controversial projects like "Worst Ex Ever," the film about Holmes makes the crisis of documentary filmmaking the subject of its reflection and in this sense curiously echoes another, less publicized premiere of this year Fielder and Oppenheim are by no means revolutionizing documentary filmmaking. They are rather testing the strength of existing conventions Nothing more is needed: "You Can See Everything" painfully accurately conveys the state of a person after a decade of living in the era of post-truth, when they know that there is deception all around, but still desperately seek paths to something real In this sense, "You Can See Everything" can rightfully be considered an experiment on audience perception. The picture offers a spectacle about a monstrously fascinating whirlpool of lies, in which all participants on both sides of the screen cease to understand what is true and what is false. At the same time, it gives us what, according to the famous formula, everyone has always wanted but was afraid to admit: to get into the dark closet and peek into someone's private life, especially if that life belongs to a scandalous celebrity. That is, a pure voyeuristic experience.The main research question of the experiment is: will we believe what we see? The expected result is the judgment we will make when, in place of that gaping void, we find quite human sympathy, pain, and compassion
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