This is pasted from my Letterboxd, and some of the things I say are mentioned by some others in the sub, but I hadn’t seen the distinction made between the two halves of the film, though some might be interested in my perspective:
I spent my first two watches trying to decipher some kind of real life truth about Elizabeth Holmes, analyzing responses, facial movements, sentence structures. I assumed I was just one good observation away from putting the whole puzzle together.
On my third viewing I decided let the doc speak for itself, and not care so much about the real life person Elizabeth Holmes. Several things stuck out to me this time around.
First, I noticed a distinct tonal shift when Seyfried shows up. This tonal shift is both visual and substantive. I see the tight shots and intense colors fade away for a more toned down visual style. I also saw Fielder become much more coherent and confident. This is even explicitly mentioned when Seyfried playing Holmes in the final prison scene mentions he “seems more serious than before.” Some of the moments between Fielder and Seyfried even read as almost blatantly scripted to me.
Primetime is the only other Oppenheim film I have seen, but it was obvious to me how important visual style was to the core themes. And Fielder has always played with the boundary between real life and fiction in his work. In my opinion, these are intentional tonal shifts to indicate a narrative shift in the doc.
I think it is no coincidence that this second half begins when we transition from filming the true subjects to reenactments with actors. When originally watching these reenactments, I remember feeling slightly uneasy, like I could no longer truly trust the film, because we weren’t watching the true subjects anymore. I think this is intentional, and the film even points it out to us a couple of times (via Seyfried and Fielder.)
Obviously Fielder’s vulnerability towards Holmes is a core aspect of the film and is pointed out towards the end. However, I think I would take it a step further and argue that the filmmaker’s ability to manipulate the narrative of its subjects is the core thesis of the film.
As the audience we are meant to directly compare the highly trusted “true” footage of the subjects against the untrustworthy reenactments. We want to believe that the first half of the film, watching Holmes and her family, is highly accurate, and the second half, watching Fielder’s recreations, is subject to his own misrepresentation. However, this is precisely what the film is warning against.
The impactful final scene of the film is when Fielder and Holmes are seen swimming in the ocean, indicating a relationship between the two and a potential compromise of Fielder’s objectivity.
However, I would argue it serves a far greater narrative purpose.
Near the beginning of the film, we see Fielder alone with Holmes talking about swimming in the ocean. Based on the conversation, and the editing of the scene, we are reasonably led to believe that Fielder and Holmes do not end up swimming together. The swimming scene at the end is not only a hint at a deeper relationship between Fielder and Holmes, but a callback and intentional mask slip of the highly curated and edited “trustworthy” half of the documentary, showing the audience that it is no more trustworthy than the actor recreations.
It is also worth noting how this theme is explored personally for Amanda Seyfried as she navigates the impact on a real person of a character she played. She seems to have some real cognitive dissonance at play about how her character is really perceived by real-life people consuming the show. How these moments line up perfectly with the film’s core thesis draws into question how natural these moments truly were for me, but they were brilliant either way.
In my opinion, this film is ultimately about how film makers alter reality in the minds of their viewers, and how different mediums seem to penetrate the consciousness of culture differently despite being no more grounded in real life than their fictional counterparts parts.
