I watched You Can See Everything this weekend and after some thought, I was both impressed and disturbed so I wrote a short critical piece on it. Contains spoilers and serious hot takes that I am willing to stand by!
Read → here | # Conspiracy as Art: You Can See Everything is a magic trick for a liar
Either Holmes is a mastermind who lies, or she is a victim. The audience gets stuck there. But those are not the only two options. Calling her a mastermind hands her a larger-than-life power the film needs in order to feel high-stakes. That is the spirit of conspiracy, and it is the spirit of Trump. A mastermind is more thrilling than a liar.
And who gets the light while we are tired? Tech multimillionaires and billionaires, again. They already shape what we read, how we vote, and what we believe is true. Now they are the focal point of our art. When one of the most talked-about films of the season is about a founder, her fraud, and her marriage, art has become one more of their platforms. Which leaves the question I keep circling. If a film takes conspiracy as its subject and confusion as its form, has it turned conspiracy into art? I think it has.