In You Can See Everything, convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes invites film-makers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim into her home in a supposed act of “radical transparency”. Holmes is filmed, along with her partner, Billy Evans, and their two young children, in the weeks before starting a prison sentence for defrauding Theranos investors. “The best way for people to see who she is,” Evans says, “is to give as much access as possible into our daily lives”. It may also be the best way to market “Theranos 2.0”, which the couple are working on during filming. But the documentary questions whether Holmes is presenting her authentic self or a manufactured persona. Fielder speaks for the audience when he asks Holmes in a tense exchange whether she’s “being real” with him. “I’m always being real,” she says.
That question of authenticity is at the heart of documentary film-making. You Can See Everything is as much about the ambiguous relationship between film-maker and subject as it is about Holmes herself. There is often a power struggle over narrative control in documentaries, with both sides of the dynamic wanting different outcomes from the final film. Watching You Can See Everything inevitably prompts the question: why would Holmes, days before she heads to jail, invite the scrutiny of a film crew?
Some people, like Holmes, think a documentary will help rebuild their reputation after public disgrace. When Anthony Weiner, who resigned from Congress after tweeting a photo of his bulging groin, tried to stage a professional comeback with a New York mayoral bid, he allowed cameras to film the journey. Only, he had more to hide: when further sex scandals emerged, his campaign went from a story of public redemption to innuendo-laden humiliation. And all the while, the cameras kept rolling. Weiner is a prime example of a subject losing control of the narrative.
Weiner may have wanted a sympathetic portrayal, but he should have known that film-makers always have their own agendas. In the book The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm reflects on the relationship between journalists and their subjects: “The subject becomes a kind of child of the writer, regarding him as a permissive, all-accepting, all-forgiving mother, and expecting the book to be written by her. Of course, the book is written by the strict, all-noticing, unforgiving father.” The same is surely true of the documentarian.
When Jackie and David Siegel allowed Lauren Greenfield to film their attempt to build a modern-day Versailles in Florida, the director wasn’t giving them free PR. Rather, with The Queen of Versailles, Greenfield was interested in the corrosive effects of extreme wealth. The Siegels agreed to be filmed because they were proud of their success. When their dream collapsed following the 2008 financial crash, The Queen of Versailles turned from a story of Xanadu-like grandeur to one of hubristic overreach. David later sued Lauren – unsuccessfully – for defamation, but he should have known from the beginning: it may have been his story, but it was never his film.
A few years after Versailles, Greenfield made The Kingmaker, about former first lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos and her attempt to return the family to power. From the beginning of the film, Greenfield said, there was a power struggle over who was telling the story. Marcos, known for her lavish lifestyle during her husband’s brutal rule, understood the power of optics. In a children’s cancer ward, she hands out money to children in a public display of compassion. “Perception is real,” Marcos says in the film, “and the truth is not.”
Some people agree to projects believing they will have editorial control. Idi Amin gave Barbet Schroeder unprecedented access after the director essentially promised that they would make the film together. But Amin was unhappy with General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait and demanded some footage be cut, rounding up more than 100 French residents in Uganda and holding them hostage until his demands were met. Schroeder agreed. It helps to be as ruthless as Amin if you want final cut.
Documentaries are often about the past, but some of cinema’s most memorable moments show people acting violently in the present, fully aware that they are being filmed. Frederick Wiseman’s austere films show abuse in psychiatric institutions (Titicut Follies) and horrific police violence (Law and Order). Why did people do unspeakable things in front of a camera? “People basically go about their business,” Wiseman told an interviewer, “and the presence of the camera doesn’t have much, if any effect on their behaviour.”
But cameras did have an effect on the subjects of Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing, probably the most morally complex example of the film-maker-subject relationship in cinema history. Perpetrators of Indonesia’s mass killings gleefully re-enact their crimes, restaging their violent memories in the style of Hollywood movies. They do not profess their innocence. Rather, they agree to be filmed because they are proud of what they did. They really do want us to see everything.
Perhaps the most interesting case of someone willingly putting themselves under scrutiny is Lance Armstrong. Alex Gibney’s documentary on Armstrong was expected to be a puff piece. When the full extent of Armstrong’s doping was revealed, however, Gibney’s film changed direction, becoming a documentary not on a cyclist’s triumph but on a master manipulator who lied to everyone, including the film-maker. In The Armstrong Lie, Armstrong admits that he “was prepared to say anything” to keep his lie going.
Some people are simply arrogant enough to think they can get away with their lies. But others become so invested in their skewed version of reality that to refuse a documentary crew would be like admitting their deception. So they welcome the cameras, often doing more damage than if they had simply retreated from public view. But unlike Armstrong, Holmes still insists she has done nothing wrong. As she says in You Can See Everything: “I have nothing to hide.”
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