I could have watched La Bola Negra for another 2 hours. That’s how enjoyable it is. I was surprised that I ultimately came to really like the present day character, because generally, I usually don’t like present day characters as much as characters form the past. (I’m thinking of Possession, both the book and the movie, and is a movie I completely adore.)
With You Can See Everything I reached a point where I thought I was going to scream if it went on any longer. And fortunately, it only had about 5 to 10 more minutes. It is a great example of how frustrating it is to deal with a pathological liar, and is a remarkable achievement. I was grateful for Amanda Seyfried’s participation in the doc.
When someone like her (pathological liar) says that she never lied, and that she invented a machine that run blood tests on a drop of blood, which she didn’t, the reasoning is this: she thought of this machine, so that was the “invention.” Once the technology was in place, her invention would be usable. In other words, semantics. Semantics is the study of meaning, and the trick she is trying to pull here is to change our meaning of invention to her meaning of invention. By saying she invented the Theranos blood testing machine, she is not telling us that it worked or that it was ever capable of working. She is only telling us that she thought of it — that thought is invention. There is, perhaps, a weird truth to this. Was the lightbulb invented because it worked? Or was it an invention whether or not it worked?
I think in our world an invention must have a corresponding success, otherwise there is no actual meaning to the word invention. You could “invent” a ladder that would attach to the clouds and climb up to 7,000 feet. You could “invent” a ring world, that orbits the sun somewhere between Earth and Mars. This twisting of the word “invention” is what she is relying on to maintain her innocence. But just because we have sliding doors that sense when you’re near and open automatically to let you through does not mean that Gene Roddenberry invented them when he created Star Trek. If, at some point later, a device comes along, created by me, that is able to take a drop of blood and analyze it for diabetes markers or malaria, etc., that wouldn’t mean she was the inventor of it, just because she thought of it.
She suffers from a serious misunderstanding of what creativity actually is. However, she is also a pathological liar. So I’m skeptical that she really misunderstands anything at all. It’s like George Costanza on Seinfeld, who was consulted by Jerry when he had to undergo a polygraph test to see if he ever watched the series 90210, which he denied for some reason. George said, “It’s not a lie, if you believe it’s not a lie.”
That is, actually, the definition of the Trump presidency and also why this movie was so exhausting to watch. But I really admire the patience and also the creative thought processes that Norman Fielder (is that his name) put into it. I don’t think I would have thought to ask Amanda Seyfried to help me understand this crazy person, but she was a huge asset to the documentary, and a real go-between for the audience. Especially when she’s in the car and calls Holmse’s boyfriend “bat shit crazy” or whatever she said. Everyone in the theatre applauded, but I think it was from relief.
Anyway, I won’t watch it again. can’t watch people like this or that Charlie Kirk fanboy of that’s posing as her boyfriend.