"Cognitive dissonance" was an issue while filming You Can See Everything
We've been invited to see it all in You Can See Everything, but will we understand, or even agree on, what we've seen? Did the makers of the film agree on what they'd shot? These were the questions raised during a New York Film Festival Q&A on Wednesday.
The film You Can See Everything, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, centers around the enigmatic and convicted Theranos founder, Elizabeth Holmes. The three-hour documentary chronicles the chaotic process of filming the documentary itself, as the filmmakers grappled with the concept of cognitive dissonance. This term refers to the mental discomfort experienced when holding contradictory beliefs or facing new information that conflicts with existing knowledge.
Fielder and Oppenheim met Holmes when Oppenheim, noticing Fielder had watched a part of Some Kind Of Heaven on the Indee screener app, reached out. The two filmmakers quickly formed a bond and became intrigued by Holmes' story. Despite initially feeling that Holmes' tale had been "very told," Fielder's curiosity about her drove him to pursue an interview with her. A24's agreement to allow the filmmakers to "pull the plug" if things didn't work out, further facilitated their decision to meet Holmes.
Fielder recalled his surreal encounter with Holmes, noting the discrepancy between her seemingly genuine moments and the underlying deception. This dissonance between reality and perception only added to the film's intriguing narrative. As the filmmakers began shooting, discrepancies between their interpretations of events only intensified, leading to a deeper exploration of cognitive dissonance.
Oppenheim drew a parallel between their experience and the philosophical film Stalker, describing their time with Holmes as "literally, the laws of reality, everything we thought was going on outside, just evaporated." The filmmakers felt that they were in a state of constant cognitive dissonance, with each person on the team experiencing different perspectives on the same events.
Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, had invited Fielder and Oppenheim to film in their home over a month before Holmes' 11-year federal prison sentence for fraud. Despite this, the filmmakers remained captivated by the project, determined to capture the essence of Holmes' world and the cognitive dissonance experienced by those around her. You Can See Everything, produced by A24, was released in theaters on October 16, presenting audiences with a unique and thought-provoking exploration of truth, perception, and reality.
Written by urgent.news from The A.V. Club's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
