Documentary, 2026
Within a documentary about willful self-deception, Seyfried herself performs some pretty hefty mental gymnastics to convince herself that her portrayal of Holmes in The Dropout was not exploitative and mean-spirited.
I felt that Seyfried’s active role and editorialization steers the film toward something more gossipy than what the first part aspires towards; she enters midway with a tabloid attitude that the film has already moved past. Her presence fills a number of rolesit’s helpful for Fielder to have someone else to voice his findings with; there needs to be some device to depict moments that the cameras were not privy to; she’s responsible for a riotous altercation with Evans, but choosing her in particular ultimately felt more like a shock-value concept turned kitschy marketing ploy.
What’s more, I found her inclusion to be rather insensitive on the part of the directorsMirroring what Holmes herself acknowledges about Seyfried’s performance in The Dropout: the final responsibility falls not on Seyfried, but the people behind the scenes who designed her performance.. Fielder and Oppenheim capture firsthand how difficult it is for Holmes to watch footage from The Dropout (if we are to believe her reaction is genuine). So isn’t inviting Seyfried as disrespectful as using the Theranos photo that Holmes hates for promotional billboards, which Fielder lambasts Evans for?
At the end, Seyfried probes whether Fielder’s protectiveness of Holmes influences his depiction of her. Fielder’s denial faintly echoes Holmes’s wide-eyed delusion. Apt, but it derails the conversation into meta-documentary when there’s more than enough to chew on without a deliberate narrative push.