In early 2015, Forbes magazine named innovator and start-up Elizabeth Holmes the youngest and richest self-made billionaire in America whose company Theranos is worth about $ 9 million. As early as the following year, when the first indications began to emerge that everything she was doing was a mere fraud, her company completely lost in value, and Holmes now faces up to 20 years in prison for a series of frauds. The documentary about this innovator / deceiver “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” was shot a few years ago by leading American research documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, and this feature mini-series by creator Elizabeth Meriwether deals with the character and work of Elizabeth Holmes.
And “The Dropout” is one of those typical American stories about the American spirit, ambition, desire for fame, wealth, success, and that at any cost. Almost a classic modern Gatsby story of humble beginnings, rapid rise and even steeper falls as we could see, and we will surely see more given the billions and billions revolving around these countless start-ups like Theranos Elizabeth Holmes. It is a story about today’s modern times and about how practically everyone believed in the tower of lies of this sociopathic manipulator, showered her with money, primarily because it was a great story. A young woman who managed to achieve such success on her own, practically creating a multimillion-dollar company out of nothing, whose invention is very socially useful. Despite the fact that there were a lot of questionnaires and a lot of suspicious things about Theranos from the beginning, no one bothered much, as long as that beautiful story could be pushed.
Right in the first sequences of the first episode of “The Dropout” it is clear to us how this beautiful story will end. Holmes in a quality performance by Amanda Seyfried is in front of investigators and answers questions, but she still does not give up her theses that she is not a fraud, but did everything with the best intentions. After eight episodes, it’s hard to believe her words and everything we’ll see (not even the court that convicted her in January 2022 of investor fraud, but acquitted her of patient fraud) believed it, and it’s really hard to believe to understand how such dilettantism and such sickness had not only passed so long, but how Holmes had successfully sucked money for years.
The story goes linearly, chronologically and we meet Elizabeth in the beginning as an ambitious teenager who is a role model for Steve Jobs and who dreams that she too will become a person who will change the world with her inventions. After enrolling in chemical engineering at Stanford, she gave up after the first year and decided to start her own start-up, a device that will analyze blood in just a few drops, and not in the standard way. Of course, something like that would really bring about a revolution in medicine, and many believed in her illusion of how she and her team designed such a device. Money began to arrive, investors showered millions on it, and the tower of cards just started to stack and build only to eventually collapse thunderously.
Just as “The Dropout” is a series that cynically and realistically depicts what a billion-dollar world of Silicon Valley looks like and where huge amounts of money are invested in trust rather than real results, this series was also a fine character study by the young innovator and visionaries. And for those who don’t know the story of Elizabeth Holmes before watching the series, it must soon become clear what this is about and how this complete madness could go on for so long. But we also see why, because when someone invests huge millions in something, then it is probably not in their interest that the money simply evaporates, regardless of the fact that the alarm bells ring and show that it is not only worthless, but also potentially dangerous to health and life People.
Elizabeth is portrayed here as a multi-layered character, initially acting like a classic starmal, a teenager trapped in the body of an old person who is interested in things her peers don’t usually bother with. It is not clear to us until the end whether she is really a visionary, a woman who believed she would create something that could change the world and revolutionize medicine or she was aware that she was just a cheater. Just as she convinced everyone around her of her vision, it seems like she managed to convince herself that she was doing well, and sick ambition and desire to prove herself, and when you pull out such unimaginable money, it’s probably very hard to stop and admit that you are made a mistake. She acts as a complete sociopath because very soon there will be control of employees, manipulation, lies, lying to investors and cheating users, and it was a quality series about the times in which we live. Rating 7.5 / 10.
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