Can you see everything?

Have you seen You Can See Everything? Co-directed by Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder, the film follows Elizabeth Holmes, infamous founder of the company Theranos, and her partner Billy Evans in the month leading up to the beginning of her prison sentence.

Without giving too much away, the film explores ideas of truth, accountability, and (perhaps most of all) how well we can know another person. We watch as Nathan, who is drawn into relationship with both Elizabeth and Billy, struggles with trying to understand what Elizabeth is thinking. To what extent can we trust what Elizabeth and Billy, who have willingly invited a documentary crew into her home, are showing us? To what extent can we trust Nathan to remain objective or neutral (if such qualities are possible to achieve) when he’s in such close proximity to his subjects? What do filmmakers owe their audience?

Thinking through these questions, I found a few articles through the Library’s databases to read more about the ethics of documentary filmmaking.

Documentary-for-the-Other: Relationships, Ethics and (Observational) Documentary by Kate Nash (2011) pulls from the philosophical work of Emmanuel Levinas to explore alternative ethics around documentaries, especially those in which a relationship is formed between the documentarian and the subject of the film. Observational documentaries, “like fiction films, … privilege showing over telling, providing the audience with the impression that they are witnessing lived time” (p. 225). How then do we navigate the ethical issues that arise? The article walks through some of the previous literature on documentary filmmaking and the way that definitions of what a documentary is or does shape what a documentarian might be responsible for. It then dives into Levinas’ arguments and exploring how they might shift how we approach these issues.

Cinematic journalism: the political economy and ‘emotional truth’ of documentary film by Gino Canella (2024) explores the relationship between journalism and documentary, looking at examples of newsrooms making documentaries to recapture audiences who no longer engage with broadcast television. Through 24 interviews with journalistic filmmakers, the article attempts to answer to questions: “How is the political economy of media affecting filmmakers’ editorial decisions and aesthetic choices? And, how do seemingly commonplace audiovisual and production techniques – such as music, lighting, sound design, and directing – complicate journalistic norms?” (p. 70). These interviews revealed three common themes – that the current digital media landscape has shaped the ways that documentaries are produced and distributed; that the relationship between filmmakers, participants (or subjects), and the audience inform the ethical frameworks of the documentarians; and that “the ‘emotional truth’ of documentary storytelling forces filmmakers to reevaluate their conceptions of objectivity and neutrality” (p. 71). 

A few other articles of interest: