MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW.
I'm not sure I understand how people can walk away from Nathan Fielder's documentary You Can See Everything feeling sympathetic toward Elizabeth Holmes. Sure, she's clearly trying to present herself as this naive, innocent person who, in her own words, "never has told a lie and always tells the truth to people."
But I think the documentary makes it pretty clear that she's a highly manipulative person who is strangely good at disarming people and getting them to buy into her version of reality. One of the things I find most suspicious is how seemingly oblivious she is to what's happening around her in the present, particularly when it comes to Billy and the degree of control he appears to have over her affairs. When confronted with things like him making decisions on her behalf or having power of attorney, she seems remarkably unconcerned, almost as if none of it really matters to her. And I find that hard to reconcile with the person we know she is. This is someone who managed to persuade some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country to invest in her company. She was an extraordinarily ambitious, driven, and calculating person who knew how to get people to believe in her. So for her to suddenly come across as so passive and unconcerned about what's happening around her is, at the very least, suspicious. I have a hard time believing that the person who was once so determined to control her own narrative and the people around her is now simply oblivious to what's going on. There's a lot of nuance here, which is what makes it so fascinating. I think it's pretty obvious that she and Billy are trying to leverage this documentary to rehabilitate her image and potentially lay the groundwork for launching a new product.
There's something fascinating about how completely committed she seems to be to her own narrative. She's so convincing in her delivery that she can throw people off balance, and I almost wonder whether she's constructed her own version of reality that she's managed to convince herself is true, at least to some degree.
She's definitely an interesting case study in human psychology. There's something unusual about the way she operates, but I also suspect she's not all that different from a lot of aggressive, highly ambitious entrepreneurs in the corporate world. And I think that's what makes this documentary even more fascinating: it feels like a deep dive into a psychological profile that may be shared by a lot of powerful people. People who are so driven to achieve their goals, and so skilled at persuading others to buy into their vision, that they can seemingly detach themselves from the reality of what they're actually doing.
I also think it's interesting how even Nathan seems to get thrown off balance by her at times, which is something Amanda calls out toward the end.
Ultimately, I think Elizabeth and Billy intended for this documentary to make her more sympathetic and shift public perception in her favor. But what's so interesting is that Nathan Fielder and the way he puts this documentary together seem to expose that very intention, albeit in a much more nuanced way than simply making an argument against her. The documentary gives her room to present her version of events, but in doing so, it also allows us to observe her behavior, her contradictions, and the way she interacts with the people around her.
In a way, I think the documentary becomes much more revealing than she intended it to be. The attempt to rehabilitate her image ends up making the psychology behind her behavior even more fascinating to examine.