"The inventor" of HBO tries to shed light on Elizabeth Holmes

Elizabeth Holmes is the inventor of the title of Alex Gibney's new documentary. Or at least she played the role. His invention was false, but she has managed to invent a personality that goes beyond this fact. At least for a little while.

The inventor: looking for blood in Silicon Valley, which debuted at SXSW, traces Holmes' rise from Stanford's dropping out of school to Silicon Valley, where, at the age of 19, Theranos was founded, a company that actually had only one product but who still managed to inflate to 9 billion. Gibney explains how easily Holmes manages to ship: a machine called Edison, able to test the blood of hundreds of diseases with blood, replacing laboratories such as Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp.

Major investors like Jim Mattis, George Shultz and Henry Kissinger were seduced by this idea.–and Holmes. Kissinger said in a phone interview that she "is like a member of a monastic order". Elsewhere, renowned documentary filmmaker Errol Morris – whose work is based on discovering the truth – runs an advertisement for Theranos and throws himself on Holmes, "I'm a fan." (Morris would not have wanted to speak Gibney about it.)

While Holmes charmed people above the ground and involved them emotionally, engineers and scientists were trying to troubleshoot Edison. Gibney talks with several former employees (two of whom will later become alert throwers) who break down the increasingly paranoid atmosphere in Theranos and explain how Holmes has dispelled their worries about the machine and its erroneous results. Others emphasize the intensity of Holmes: "She did not blink," says a former receptionist. Gibney spends a lot of time showing close-ups of his face, like saying, "Hey, can you read?"

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But he does not describe Holmes as a bloodthirsty monster. One can think that she – a woman in a field dominated by men – is an idealist who strives to do everything to live up to the status of her hero, Steve Jobs. "I have been in black turtleneck since the age of 7," she said in an interview. She says the New YorkerKen Auletta says she had the same design for a time machine. Much has been done about Holmes voice, which many claim to be so wrong. If Holmes deepens her voice to be more respected in Silicon Valley, where men are allowed to exist and do business much more freely, you will not necessarily be able to blame her. But in the context of his long con, it takes a different look. (The veracity of his voice is not addressed in the film.)

Silicon Valley is teeming with technology without any science or substance behind it, and Theranos is one of the most glaring examples of recent years. L & # 39; inventor says it clearly, but he still has some blind spots. Gibney talks to a phlebotomist who has been fooled, but the film does not have a clearer idea of ​​the impact of this fraudulent technology on the lives or health of users. What was Holmes thinking? Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist, presents the closest assessment, linked to the statement that people can deceive a lie detector with the right state of mind. The doc suffers from not having an interview with Holmes or his partner in the crime / Theranos' former president, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, and not to zoom out to show how the scandal reflects the secret mechanisms of Silicon Valley. What happened to all the blood that Theranos collected?

L & # 39; inventor do a lot of things but not much to say. We still do not know better Holmes at the end. Is it just an invention too?

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