In ‘You Can See Everything,’ Elizabeth Holmes meets her equal in comedian Nathan Fielder

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“Isn’t it weird that I, like, did a TV show about kind of a business scam, and you got in trouble for like … a business scam?” comedian and filmmaker Nathan Fielder gently asks Elizabeth Holmes. One month before the notorious Theranos CEO surrendered to begin her 11-year criminal fraud sentence in 2023, Holmes and her husband contacted A24 as a last-ditch effort to exonerate her in the public eye, suggesting they send a film crew to document her final days of freedom.

“你不觉得很奇怪吗？我做了一个关于商业诈骗的电视节目，而你却因为……商业诈骗惹上了麻烦？”喜剧演员兼电影制作人内森·菲尔德（Nathan Fielder）温和地问伊丽莎白·霍姆斯（Elizabeth Holmes）。在2023年这位臭名昭著的Theranos首席执行官入狱服刑11年之前的一个月，霍姆斯和她的丈夫联系了A24公司，试图做最后的努力来洗清公众眼中的罪名，并建议他们派摄制组记录她最后的自由时光。

Alongside director Lance Oppenheim, Fielder — a cringe-comedy mastermind whose work often walks the line between fact and fiction — embraced the impossible project of figuring out who the infamous Stanford dropout really is. “I never actually made that connection,” says Holmes. “I think it’s a pretty different situation.”

在导演兰斯·奥本海姆（Lance Oppenheim）的协助下，菲尔德——这位尴尬喜剧的大师，其作品常游走于事实与虚构的边缘——接下了这个几乎不可能的任务：弄清楚这位声名狼藉的斯坦福辍学生究竟是谁。“我从来没把这两件事联系起来，”霍姆斯说，“我认为这是完全不同的情况。”

No one is better prepared than Fielder to probe the depths of Holmes’ psyche. His satirical docu-reality show “Nathan for You” catapulted him to cult stardom as he assumed the role of an exaggerated, deadpan version of himself who tries to help struggling small businesses by executing asinine interventions.

没有人比菲尔德更适合深入探究霍姆斯的心理。他的讽刺性纪录真人秀《Nathan for You》让他一举成名，他在剧中扮演了一个夸张、面无表情的自己，试图通过执行各种愚蠢的干预措施来帮助陷入困境的小企业。

In one early episode that went viral, Fielder convinces a coffee shop to change its name to “Dumb Starbucks” as a marketing stunt, but consults a lawyer to help him toe the flimsy line of parody law and escape legal trouble. “If you just said that, you know, Theranos was a comedy bit, maybe you could get off scot-free,” Fielder says to Holmes. “It was real.” “I was just kind of making a little joke. Maybe it was in bad taste.”

在早期的一集走红节目中，菲尔德说服一家咖啡店改名为“愚蠢星巴克”（Dumb Starbucks）作为营销噱头，但他咨询了律师，以确保自己踩在戏仿法的边缘，从而逃避法律麻烦。“如果你当时说Theranos只是个喜剧段子，也许你就能全身而退了，”菲尔德对霍姆斯说，“但那是真的。”“我当时只是开了个小玩笑。也许这品味太差了。”

We already know that Elizabeth Holmes is not innocent. What we still can’t figure out, though, is whether she really, truly believes she did nothing wrong. Even as she sat on trial — listening to testimonies from investors who lost hundreds of millions of dollars, whistleblowers who were silenced when they flagged that Theranos’ blood-testing devices didn’t work, and patients who acted on incorrect blood test results — Holmes never wavered.

我们已经知道伊丽莎白·霍姆斯并不无辜。然而，我们仍然无法确定的是，她是否真的发自内心地认为自己没有做错任何事。即使在审判期间——听着那些损失了数亿美元的投资者的证词，听着那些在指出Theranos血液检测设备无法正常工作时被噤声的举报人的控诉，以及那些因错误血液检测结果而受到影响的患者的陈述——霍姆斯从未动摇过。

Across Fielder’s body of metatextual comedy, even his most reverent fans can’t quite figure out when he’s acting, when he’s being himself, and if Fielder himself even knows where to draw that line anymore. In that way, Fielder is just like Holmes: After over a decade in the public eye, onlookers remain captivated by each of their ambiguous personas. “The world believes a reality about me that isn’t true,” she tells Fielder. “I know I didn’t commit any crime.” [The rest of this review contains spoilers.]

在菲尔德的元文本喜剧作品中，即使是他最忠实的粉丝也无法分辨他何时在表演，何时在做自己，甚至连菲尔德本人是否还知道那条界限在哪里都成了疑问。从这个角度看，菲尔德和霍姆斯很像：在公众视野中活跃了十多年后，旁观者依然被他们各自模糊的人格所吸引。“世界相信了一个关于我的、并不真实的现实，”她告诉菲尔德，“我知道我没有犯任何罪。”[本评论的其余部分包含剧透。]

Early on in filming, The New York Times had just published a profile of Holmes, which was widely criticized at the time for allowing Holmes to portray herself as an innocent mom deprived of the chance to watch her kids grow up. And yet, Holmes and her husband, hotel heir Billy Evans, were livid about the article.

在拍摄初期，《纽约时报》刚刚发表了一篇关于霍姆斯的专题报道，当时该报道因允许霍姆斯将自己描绘成一个无法陪伴孩子成长的无辜母亲而受到广泛批评。然而，霍姆斯和她的丈夫、酒店继承人比利·埃文斯（Billy Evans）却对这篇文章感到愤怒。

At one point in an interview, Holmes tells the Times reporter that she wasn’t offended by actress Amanda Seyfried’s portrayal of her in Hulu’s miniseries “The Dropout” because “they’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created.” She and her husband insist that the quote was taken out of context. They claim that they have evidence that Holmes actually said, “They’re playing a character they created,” relieving her from any implication that she admitted to concocting an inauthentic persona as CEO of Theranos.

在一次采访中，霍姆斯告诉《纽约时报》记者，她并没有被女演员阿曼达·塞弗里德（Amanda Seyfried）在Hulu迷你剧《辍学生》（The Dropout）中的表演所冒犯，因为“他们演的不是我。他们演的是我创造的一个角色。”她和丈夫坚称这句话被断章取义了。他们声称有证据表明霍姆斯当时说的是“他们演的是他们创造的角色”，从而排除了她承认自己作为Theranos首席执行官虚构了一个虚假人格的暗示。

Fielder asks Evans multiple times to share this evidence so he can prove that Holmes was misquoted. He never does. Amanda Seyfried portrays Elizabeth Holmes in “The Dropout.” Image Credits: Beth Dubber/Hulu

菲尔德多次要求埃文斯分享这些证据，以便证明霍姆斯被误引了。但他从未提供。阿曼达·塞弗里德在《辍学生》中饰演伊丽莎白·霍姆斯。图片来源：Beth Dubber/Hulu

Once Holmes reports to prison, Fielder is agonized as he tries to make something out of his month of footage. He calls in the perfect sidekick to help him dissect her confounding behavior: the very actress who portrays her in “The Dropout.” Fielder plays Seyfried a brutal clip from his time with Holmes, when he tries watching “The Dropout” with the subject of the series.

当霍姆斯入狱后，菲尔德在试图利用这一个月的素材制作影片时感到非常痛苦。他请来了一位完美的搭档来帮助他剖析她令人困惑的行为：正是那位在《辍学生》中饰演她的女演员。菲尔德向塞弗里德播放了一段他与霍姆斯相处时的残酷片段，当时他试图与该剧的主角一起观看《辍学生》。

When they get to a tense scene involving Holmes’ manipulative ex-boyfriend and former Theranos partner in crime Sunny Balwani — who is also now in prison — Holmes can no longer bear to watch this fictional version of herself. She turns away and cries. In other words, Seyfried is watching Holmes react to Seyfried’s portrayal of Holmes, who was probably also playing a character herself.

当看到一个紧张的场景时，涉及霍姆斯那充满操纵欲的前男友兼Theranos前同谋桑尼·巴尔瓦尼（Sunny Balwani）——他现在也已入狱——霍姆斯再也无法忍受观看这个虚构的自己。她转过身哭了起来。换句话说，塞弗里德正在观看霍姆斯对塞弗里德所饰演的霍姆斯的反应，而那个霍姆斯本人可能也在扮演一个角色。

But Seyfried is not the only one creating a crude approximation of the real Elizabeth. Evans has constructed a lifelike AI avatar of his wife, trapped inside of a large vertical screen that he wheels over to the dinner table to sit with him and his kids as though she’s actually there.

但塞弗里德并不是唯一一个创造真实伊丽莎白粗糙近似物的人。埃文斯制作了一个栩栩如生的妻子AI化身，困在一个巨大的垂直屏幕里，他把屏幕推到餐桌旁，让它和自己及孩子们坐在一起，仿佛她真的在那里一样。

The remainder of the film is a constellation of colliding personas. Though it’s a nonfiction documentary, it’s clear that everyone involved is, to some extent, also performing for the cameras. How could they not? Seyfried’s determination to understand Holmes’ story seems pure, but it’s not lost on the audience that she just scored a significant role in one of the most talked-about movies of the year.

影片的其余部分是一系列相互碰撞的人格集合。虽然这是一部非虚构纪录片，但很明显，所有参与者在某种程度上也都在为镜头表演。他们怎么可能不表演呢？塞弗里德想要理解霍姆斯故事的决心看起来很纯粹，但观众不会忽略她刚刚在今年最受关注的电影之一中获得了一个重要角色。

Meanwhile, Evans behaves in such an unfathomably egregious manner that he may even be intentionally playing the villain to drum up sympathy for his reviled wife. Evans knows that Fielder and Oppenheim are not convinced of Holmes’ innocence. This documentary will not sway anyone to believe that his wife is being wrongly held in federal custody.

与此同时，埃文斯的行为极其恶劣，以至于他可能是在故意扮演反派，从而为他那备受唾弃的妻子博取同情。埃文斯知道菲尔德和奥本海姆并不相信霍姆斯的清白。这部纪录片不会让任何人相信他的妻子是被联邦监狱错误关押的。

But Evans makes himself appear so appallingly unlikable that some viewers may leave the theater feeling bad for Holmes, seeing her as a victim and allowing her to double down on another persona she adopted while on trial: a harmless, docile woman who was manipulated by her ex-partner to obliviously tell a cascade of increasingly harmful lies. Once Holmes is in jail, Fielder is not allowed to bring recording devices when he visits her, so he tries to write a script of their conversations from memory, struggling to accurately re-create the nuances of a conversation where every last word carries immense meaning. With Seyfried reprising her role from “The Dropou

但埃文斯让自己看起来如此令人反感，以至于一些观众在离开影院时可能会对霍姆斯产生同情，将她视为受害者，并让她得以加倍强化她在审判期间采用的另一个人格：一个被前伴侣操纵、在不知情的情况下撒下一连串日益严重的谎言的无害、温顺的女性。一旦霍姆斯入狱，菲尔德在探视她时就不被允许携带录音设备，因此他试图凭记忆写下他们的谈话剧本，努力准确地重现那些每一个字都意义重大的谈话细节。随着塞弗里德重演她在《辍学生》中的角色……