Speaker A
I have been extremely busy in the past few months and so I finally after uh way too late finally saw the movie you can see everything that everyone was telling me to go see and now I understand why it
Jonathan Pageau reviews the documentary 'You Can See Everything' on Elizabeth Holmes and Nathan Fielder, exploring how representation, transparency, and symbolism can obscure rather than reveal truth.
Key Takeaways
- Total access and factual data do not guarantee understanding of what is actually happening.
- Representation serves to produce experiences and identification, not only to expose facts.
- Documentaries can conceal their own mechanisms of construction, and viewers rarely question them.
- Symbolic interpretation requires recognizing the purposes behind representation.
What the video covers
- The reviewer praises 'You Can See Everything' as a brilliant meta-documentary about the purpose and limits of representation.
- The film follows Nathan Fielder spending 30 days with Elizabeth Holmes and her family before her prison sentence, under the premise that 'you can see everything.'
- Early scenes, such as the shocking shower nudity, suggest that total access becomes a veil rather than a path to truth.
- The documentary's narrative shifts as viewers move from seeing Holmes as manipulative, to suspecting her husband of controlling access, to questioning the filmmaker's own motives.
- Multiple layers of performance are exposed, including the actress who played Holmes in 'The Dropout' re-enacting scenes the filmmaker could not access.
- The film shows that changing a single word, as in the New York Times quote about 'the character she made for herself,' can alter meaning entirely.
- Pageau argues representation is used to create experiences and models for identification, not neutral factual revelation.
- The film blurs documentary, fiction, reality TV, and social media, dissimulating the intentions behind showing things.
- Pageau concludes that one cannot step far enough outside such representations to coldly determine what really happened.
- The final segment shifts to an unrelated announcement about a children's book series, which is not part of the review.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and spoiler warning
- 01:36Premise: 30 days with Elizabeth Holmes
- 02:47Access, veils, and the shower scene
- 04:22Shifting perspectives and the meta-documentary
- 05:56Layers of performance and the actress
- 07:59Fielder's motives and the mirror maze
- 09:56Representation, purpose, and cultural impact
- 12:14Closing reflections and unrelated announcement
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
is uh quite brilliant. It is a brilliant piece of storytelling and it is a brilliant questioning about the reason or why is it that we engage in representation and how is it that we can do that? that is what purposes can we
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accomplish in the act of representation. So what I want to do is of course you know this is first going to be full of spoilers. So you know always my reviews are always full of spoilers. I want to
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go a little bit through the movie not too much um but mostly talk about some of the implications of what the movie is doing um so that you can understand uh what is it saying about the question of
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representation. What does that mean for symbolism? And what can we learn from that in terms of people that are engaged in symbolic interpretation?
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This is Jonathan Pjo. Welcome to the symbolic world. So the movie uh is of course a documentary on Elizabeth Holmes, the founder CEO of Terranos, who is got these documentaries to come to her house, Nathan Fielder of all people,
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which is that's already a very strange idea that she got someone who is known for kind of trolling and being a uh a jokester to come and spend the last 30 days with her family, the last 30 days
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before she goes to prison. Of course, the idea is that you can see everything.
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They at first have this pretense that the uh filmmakers will have access to their entire lives will be there in their house living there. Nathan sleeps in in the house and um that that they'll be able to see everything and therefore
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they should be able to transparently uh see the dynamics of the family, the dynamics of what that's motivating Elizabeth Holmes. And this of course is taken to extremes in the in the early scenes of the movie. There's a pretty
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shocking scene that you don't expect, which is you see her husband naked in the shower. It's rare in American cinema that they kind of show full male uh nudity that way. So it's a little shocking because you're like, what is
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it? Why are they showing this in the documentary? What's the point? And then as you watch you realize that in fact, you know, this kind of full access uh capacity to see everything almost like the pornographic uh gesture
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doesn't mean that you see everything. In fact, it is a kind of veil uh for trying to see what is true and that in fact the access to factuality and the kind of access to data does not mean that you
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will be able to understand what is happening. that is the question that you're asking the reason why you're investigating cannot be fully captured in the transparency and access to the facts. So this is of course something that is very much the theme of the
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entire movie. As uh the Fielder character starts to investigate, you know, you also as a person watching the movie, you're taken through these stages where at first you have this sense that this woman is, you know, obviously manipulative and is trying to kind of
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control the narrative, is trying to represent herself as being completely innocent and maybe is also trying to seduce the interviewer. Um, and so this first sent you, you're like, "Oh, yeah, this makes sense. this is what is happening in the story. Then it shifts
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and suddenly you start to realize that her husband is possibly manipulating her, is controlling the narrative, is trying ultimately to start, he starts gatekeeping the access to her. And so you start to question that and then ultimately the whole thing becomes a
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meta experience where you realize the the documentary itself is trying to make you realize that you're watching a documentary and the mechanisms of the documentary are exposed. They're already there at the beginning, but we're so used to watching documentaries that we
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often don't question why am I seeing this, you know, why why am I seeing the interviewer? Why are there scenes of him, you know, uh in bed uh trying to demonstrate certain things? So, he realized that the entire thing is almost
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like a theatrical performance. And there are many layers of theater that are layered on top of each other. There is Elizabeth Holmes. It might be pretending. There's her husband who is also might be pretending. Then there's the actress who played Elizabeth Holmes
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in the original u TV show that featured her, the dropout, um being used as an actress to represent the moments that the documentary guy doesn't have access to. And so there's this new layer that is this kind of diving into the actor who the actor
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who played her in the series now playing her again in a different uh guys and then you and then finally at the end you have this final layer where you totally realize the documentary itself might also be a kind of fiction that is
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motivated possibly by Nathan Fielder's affection for Elizabeth Holmes as the actress towards the end of the movie is questioning his participation in uh in this movie and the way that that he is trying to portray Holmes.
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We cut to a scene where you see him and Elizabeth Holmes swimming in the water together and and them acting in a way that honestly is very strange for married for a married woman to act.
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She's kind of touching him. She's pulling him in the water. There's a kind of weird intimacy that they are um that they're dealing with. And so the the filmmaker himself is somewhat trying to question his own motivation in
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portraying the movie. And so when you the movie ends, you're end you end up in a kind of maze of mirrors where you don't really know what is what is true in the sense of the investigative aspect of what is true. You know, if this
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documentary was there to show the truth of something that is, is she guilty? Is she the one? almost like a court would do. Then it utterly fails and it also exposes the problem of using representation to try to get to this uh
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capacity to get to the facts, right? Um you know we have lived in a world where we use fiction that is based on real events and that fiction affects the way that we understand the original u events that are being portrayed. We are also
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used to the documentary, to reality TV, to the possibility of representing ourselves, representing ourselves, representing others through social media through all these different means. And what the documentary is able to expose is the way in which this actually
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dissimulates that it is not so much an act of revelation of factuality, but it actually dissimulates, you could say, the intention of why it is that we are showing things. And this is I think a really wonderful kind of exploration. I
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think that it will send long waves in culture if people are able to pay attention to the problem that it is exposing and how it is exposing the fact that when representation is used, it is used to bring about an experience and it is
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used in some ways to make you experience a story. And that is very different from the fact-based notion of exposing what is what really happened, you could say.
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And in the movie, they do amazing they do it in an amazing way where they demonstrate on several occasions and at several layers of the documentary how if you change only one word in a sentence, you can change the meaning of that word.
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And so there's a New York Times article at the beginning of the of the movie that is brought up where Elizabeth Holm says that they changed one word in her statement which has to do with the fact that you know in the New York Times
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article it says that that the people believed in the character she she made for herself. I forget exactly how it's phrased. Um and then Elizabeth Holstead I didn't say for myself I didn't like say that I myself made that character
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that is a character that was made right like they believed in the character. So just these two words this like little change in the statement completely changes the meaning. Then later in the the the in the um in the movie when
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Elizabeth Holm says that her machine can do the things that you know that she said Fielder realizes that what she means by can is the possibility and so the machine because it's a platform it has the capacity to basically uh analyze
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any disease but it doesn't mean that it's actually doing it now. it you have to basically fill up the the the data so that the machine will come to do it. And so she seems to imply that when she says
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that the machine can do this, she means in potential. And what people are hearing and one of the reason why she was condemned is that what people understood that the that was meant by that was that in actuality that the
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machine can do this. And so just now now it's even the same word that even the same word with one little difference of interpretation of that one word you actually totally flip the meaning of the of of the sentence. You completely
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invert the meaning of the sentence. And this of course is taken up later when Fielder himself seems to misremember one word in her testimony in the prison you know and he hesitates. And not only does he hesitate in the meaning of the word,
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but when the actress is playing the text, the way that she plays the text will affect the meaning and the understanding. And so as she reads the lines, he says, "No, no, don't say it that way." And then she changes the way
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she says it. And it completely changes the meaning of what it is that is happening. And so what the movie is doing is of course almost in a in the most radical kind of post-modern way. It is exposing the impossibility
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of representation to be mimemetic in an objective and completely neutral sense. And there is even a suggestion something that I've believed for a very long time which is that because realism in the sense of either painterly realism or realism in terms of um the
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way that movies are made or the way that documentaries are made uh because realis realism in some ways hides its artifice, right? It uses an artifice of spontaneity. It makes you feel like you're watching real life and that
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you're watching something that isn't controlled, isn't edited, isn't directed, then it actually comes closer to lying because it dissimulates its artifice in a kind of realism.
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And so there are other mech methods of representation that of course do not pretend to be accurate portrayals of something that happened but rather use representation for other means. Like a simple example of that in history is of
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course when Plutarch writes his lives of great men. His purpose in writing the lives of great men is not a accurate portrayal of the person, you know, especially the fact that they lived, you know, hundreds of years before him, but
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that in fact the purpose of the representation is to create models that people can look at and identify with and follow. And in doing that, the use of representation is aimed at a different purpose than what we tend to think in
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terms of kind of reductionist materialists. We believe that the purpose of representation is accuracy.
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And this is extremely important at this moment. And it's important as you kind of think back at the way in which um you know the the way in which I talk about Bible stories or the way if you look at
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how icons are represented what you realize is that in many traditional modes of representation whether it's icons whether it's it's it's ancient storytelling even if it's Hamlet or the way that Shakespeare told stories the artifice of representation is aimed at something different is aimed
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at the manifestation of truths that are deeper than factuality. The manifestation of truth of truths that are there to resonate with us in terms of models or counter models in terms of things that we can identify with and
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that we can have feel discussed for or that we can we can be aligned to. and and that this honestly ends up being a more truthful mode of representation and a you could say a uh a less deceitful mode of representation,
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you know, and the movie is very fascinating because it feels something like you could say it's like the last documentary. I'm not saying there won't be documentaries after it, but it is a documentary that fully exposes the mechanism of documentary making and
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questions the notion that documentaries themselves can lead us towards uh factuality. It's a it's a kind of deconstruction of the documentary process. But in doing so, it might also open space for another type of documentary telling, a kind of
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self-aware documentary where the documentary can be used in some ways consciously without trying to deceive people as a way in in which to create stories that people resonate with. You know, there's an amazing uh moment in the story where I mean, there's so many
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meta levels, you can't even stop seeing them once you start to see them. There's an amazing scene where the actress Amanda Seaff freed who plays Elizabeth Holmes in the TV series The Dropout, but then now is playing her again for the
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documentary, plays Elizabeth Holmes in prison, telling Nathan Fielder how Amanda Cedre's representation of her in the dropout was extremely damaging to her. And so yeah, I mean, can you even count the levels of representation that are being that are
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being represented in this and the levels of irony and of twist that are being represented in this moment? And as she's representing Elizabeth Holmes that is uh complain, not complaining or expressing how much pain and suffering she's experienced um because of that
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actress's representation of her. Then you cut back to the actress in the documentary who is defending herself, right? And trying to defend the the use of the uh the thing that she did, the fact that, you know, her acting her, you
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know, that the things that she represented. Obviously, they weren't there. They can't know what happened, but she even says, well, that could have happened, right? And it it is captured you know that even though I don't know how she lied and how she pretended we
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know that she did and therefore representing her in this different in these different ways is completely appropriate and then as you're watching you realize I mean at least I kept asking myself I mean is that also a script that is are the parts of the
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documentary that are meant that the actress is being herself and is speaking to Fielder was that scripted was Is that planned or is that truly spontaneous?
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And there's absolutely no way to know that and you know that how doc anybody who's participated in a documentary I participate in documentaries where the documentarist tries to guide you and tries to say oh well maybe you could say
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this you because it you know that it'll fit in in his narrative. It can be very frustrating, but this is obviously how documentaries are made. And so you you keep jumping out of the documentary if you're very attentive and you keep
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asking yourself, you know, how far removed do I have to stand outside of this experience to be able to coldly realize what really is happening? And the answer is you can't. You can't step far enough outside the documentary to
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understand what is really happening and how much the re the director is playing a part in the artifice and how much the interviewer and how much the actress and how much Elizabeth Holmes and how much of her husband are playing parts in this
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representation. And so the the the whole thing is this fractal kind of deconstruction of of representation in ways that are so surprising that these things came together and a whole level a whole layer of how this representation is there is
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this whole other layer of how the husband pretends to be Elizabeth Holmes and how the husband also has made an AI version of Elizabeth Holmes that he has in his house as this giant screen that he can talk to and
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engage with and he sees that it's completely normal and as if he doesn't actually need to be in a relationship with his actual wife. You know, this AI and his internal representation of her is sufficient for him to be in communion
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with her. So it brings this image of representation and the accuracy of representation not only in terms of the documentary but even in terms of the mental images that we have of others.
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the mental representation that we have of the other person and how we in some ways are engaging in that mental representation. Even obviously as we are talking to the person in front of us that even as we're speaking to them, we are also at the
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same time engaging with the mental representation of that person. And so the ultimate finality is that the purpose of communion, right? And the purpose of being in a relationship, the purpose of telling stories, the purpose of representing something cannot be
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accurate portrayal because you can never step enough outside of your experience to get to the objective portrayal in the first place, right? And the whole frame, even the frame of the the documentary and of course even the frame you could
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say of the trial is not really to arrive at a completely neutral objective uh you could say representation of reality. But even the trial itself is pointed that is we're trying to discover some truth and the means by which we're are going to
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represent and to mediate these facts is always going to be always going to come together towards the discovering of something particular like of moving towards a direction. And of course a court has its own means of doing that.
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And sometimes we confuse the way in which the court does it you know which which obviously sometimes misses but still has developed the right way but of presenting evidence and of you know doing it in a forensic manner that can
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help lead to a a a verdict of guilty or not guilty. But sometimes we pretend we think that the rep social media and media representations are equivalent to the court. And we've seen that of course in the way in which you know people
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often go to the court of public opinion during the me too era. You saw a lot of that where people would basically use narrative, use representation in order to create certain effects. Um and people were confusing that with the way in
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which a court functions and the way in which you can arrive at an actual truly you could say guilty verdict in a legal manner. And so we have to you know as we watch the the movie you know these are
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the questions that are still kind of haunting me thinking about you know what then can be the purpose of documentary you know is it only propaganda because this is of course I think one of the problems that the movie is exposing is
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that in fact you can manipulate reality right if your purpose is to discover what's real the mimemetic element of the documentary country can actually simulate a narrative in order to bring about a conclusion that ends up being more something like propaganda and
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so how do we get out of it in a documentary uh purpose you know that's why I tend to like narrative storytelling more that is films and books and you know ancient stories because already in its own representation there's a manner in which
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we're pointing towards a purpose that is the manifestation of true uh patterns right the participation in them and so I don't know what the future of documentary storytelling can be after this kind of movie it it has to be probably more
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clearly about inspiration maybe about trying to kind of help people see something beautiful that they can follow that they can emulate uh or something that they can despise or criticize but also always understanding that it's always. It's not just the facts that you
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have to be able to that it can't just be about the understanding of neutral factuality, but using factuality and weaving it together towards something that can inspire us or help us see a truth that is higher than the factuality. And so it leaves me very
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puzzled about, you know, what a documentary can be. But at the same time, it is an absolute gem of a movie.
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If you haven't seen it, I definitely recommend it. You know, you there there are so many more questions to be asked and there are all these levels of of representation that stack on top of each other um that really leave you
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disoriented at the end, not sure of what it is that you have actually watched and not sure exactly what it is that just happened to you. And so, uh I hope this was useful. This was just a few thoughts
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on the subject and uh thanks for your attention everybody and I'll talk to you very soon. Bye-bye. Hello everyone. I'm excited to announce that the fourth book in our Tales for Once and Ever series is out. The Valiant Little Taylor. This was
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one of my favorite stories as a child. It's a story of trickery and of giant killing. And if you get it now until November 21st, you will get a free copy of the audio book read by myself. So, I
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cannot wait for people to see it. It is beautifully illustrated by Eloise Sherer who had illustrated our Jack and the Fallen Giants and you will see that she did an amazing job. It feels like these illustrations are getting better and
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better at every book. So, I cannot wait for you to have it in your hands and especially to know how your children react to this new
Topics:You Can See EverythingNathan FielderElizabeth Holmesdocumentaryrepresentationsymbolismmeta-documentaryJonathan Pageautheranosmedia criticism
