Film about Elizabeth Holmes’ final days risks reviving her self-justifications
Elizabeth Holmes is the subject of a new film, *You Can See Everything*, which follows the final days before she went to prison. The review argues that the film’s surreal style and deliberate ambiguity have attracted more praise than its shallow portrayal of Holmes warrants, potentially allowing her familiar self-justifications to win over viewers again.
Holmes founded Theranos, once valued at $9 billion, before allegations of fraud over its blood-testing device led to a trial. She was convicted on four counts and sentenced to 11 years in prison. The review notes that whistleblowers Tyler Shultz and Erika Cheung exposed the company’s lies, and points to earlier accounts including Alex Gibney’s documentary *The Inventor* and the series *The Dropout*.
In short
- A new film revisits Elizabeth Holmes before prison.
- The review calls its portrayal shallow and overpraised.
- Holmes was convicted on four counts in the Theranos case.
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The case for
A film about Holmes’s final days could use ambiguity and surrealism to explore how she understood herself, rather than simply repeat the prosecution’s account. Giving her perspective room on screen may help audiences examine how ambition, pressure and self-deception can coexist, and can prompt useful questions about the forces that allowed Theranos to gain credibility.
The case against
That approach risks giving Holmes’s self-justifications emotional force without adequately confronting the harm and deception established at trial. If the film’s portrayal is shallow and sidelines the whistleblowers’ evidence, viewers may come away with a more sympathetic impression than the facts warrant, especially after earlier works have already examined the case in depth.
Explained simply
Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos, a company that promised to run many medical tests from a small amount of blood. It attracted major investment and was once valued at $9 billion, but questions about whether its technology worked led to investigations and a criminal trial.
Former Theranos employees Tyler Shultz and Erika Cheung raised concerns about the company’s claims. Holmes was convicted of four fraud-related offences and sentenced to 11 years in prison; her case has also been covered in a documentary and a television series.
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Originally published by Ars Technica as “Review: You Can See Everything blurs the view of Elizabeth Holmes’ deceit”.