Cake Placid

Elizabeth Holmes is guilty of her fraud becoming legally fraud due to not continuing long enough— in the world of venture capital, the whole point is saying stuff like “we can make self-driving cars” & the proviso being “granted that we can continue to raise funds toward that end.” That whole world is about utilizing fraud (fictitious capital) toward scaling a speculative fiction to the degree that it “becomes real.” She’s not in some subjective sense lying, as she believes “in the idea” of that possibility being brought into reality through herself (this is the sense of herself she imposes upon herself after being raped as a freshman in college). She devotes her whole life to this idea & this is her sense of self— so what’s interesting about the film is that she does not lie, but she does lie (silently) to herself about the people around her that she has chosen to offload “pragmatic concerns” to— that enables her to be “clean” of these things, but “it’s not about the money”, moreso it’s about maintaining this absolute faith in the concept she has of her destiny in life etc. Most cult leaders believe in the fraud they commit— to preach the messianic age is to say “this will be true for everyone someday.” The problem with these types is that they enable their shields to get away with anything. She holds loyalty to the cause above her own concerns. It’s a very tragic situation— as she’s also almost definitely on the spectrum to some degree— so her whole adult life is this performance, to herself, of being self-composed & devoted to her quasi messianic mission of saving the world etc. If this belief collapses, her entire psyche would shatter into a million pieces. She is both the femme fatale & the dead girl in one person— this is what makes it such a compelling film noir. It’s beautiful that she will never give up on her quest, her faith, her belief etc— if she truly believed herself to be a fraud, she’d have taken a plea deal.