Nathan Fielder’s much-hyped documentary about Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes is getting five-star reviews ahead of its US premiere this week.
asserted
documentary → hype → premiere
You Can See Everything
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You → see → Everything
We’ve been warning it’s “like nothing you’ve ever seen” and “it will break your brain”.
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it → warn → brain
Variety has even theorised it will be the first documentary nominated for best picture at the Oscars.
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it → theorise → Oscars
Few details about the 174-minute movie have been revealed so far, but we know that Holmes invited an A24 film crew, including co-directors Fielder and Lance Oppenheim (Primetime), into her home 34 days before going to prison to serve an 11-year sentence for fraud.
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Holmes → reveal → fraud
The ominous teaser trailer – featuring a mousy, unblinking Holmes claiming she has “nothing to deceive you on” – went viral last month and is possibly the most unsettling one minute and 17 seconds you’ll endure this year.
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you → feature → you
Unfortunately, Australian audiences will have to wait a few more weeks to see the full thing.
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audiences → have → thing
The film doesn’t hit cinemas here until November 12.
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film → hit → November
But you can (and should) use that time to properly familiarise yourself with Fielder’s work – to build your tolerance to his oddities like a drug.
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you → use → drug
This deadpan comedian and documentarian makes TV that necessitates a descriptor stronger than “excruciatingly cringe”.
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that → make → cringe
He once convinced a frozen yoghurt shop to sell poo-flavoured desserts.
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He → convince → desserts
He manipulated a fatherless six-year-old into believing he was his new daddy.
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he → manipulate → old
This is a man who became so doggedly obsessed with the steady hand of hero pilot Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger that he recreated and physically relived Sully’s life from birth, a process which included breastfeeding from the exposed nipple of a towering, and terrifying, puppet-mother.
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which → become → mother
Fielder’s work aims not just to rattle normies, but to freak out freaks.
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work → aim → freaks
He needles at the root of neuroses so fundamental to the human condition that it may upend your grasp on reality itself.
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it → needle → reality
It’s hysterical, absurd, awkward and often profoundly moving – but you can’t just go in without a plan.
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you → ’ → plan
It’s certainly not what Fielder would advise.
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Fielder → ’ → what
The Rehearsal (2022 and 2025)
In The Rehearsal, Fielder creates exceedingly elaborate scenarios, hiring a horde of actors and building full-scale sets to help participants “rehearse” for difficult moments in lives.
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participants → create → lives
In the first episode, he helps a man prepare to confess a white lie to his pub trivia team.
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man → help → team
By the end of the season, Fielder has entered the experiment himself, rehearsing for fatherhood and the complexities of raising a child in an interfaith environment.
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Fielder → enter → environment
He tailspins deeper and deeper into rehearsal mode, almost Backrooms-style, by twisting and rewinding the rehearsal itself multiple times so he can rehearse being a more ethical director to the actor playing his fake child.
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he → tailspin → child
Once you’ve finished season one, you will probably find yourself asking some spiky ethical questions.
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yourself → finish → questions
You might think Fielder is mean-spirited or even kind of evil.
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Fielder → think → ?
Is this program emotionally damaging to its participants, and should I feel bad for enjoying it?
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I → damage → it
Did I even enjoy it?
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I → enjoy → it
You can choose to end it here, and if so, godspeed and good luck.
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You → choose → it
Alternatively, well … your dark night of the soul is only just beginning.
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night → begin → soul
Season two of The Rehearsal is perhaps one of the greatest artistic achievements in modern television history, and most effectively consumed by a viewer who knows almost nothing about it going in.
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who → consume → it
I’ll just tell you this: Fielder is fascinated by commercial aeroplane crashes and the failures that precede them, and has some ideas about how to make in-flight communication between co-pilots safer and more effective.
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communication → tell → pilots
The premise is simple: Nathan Fielder – who graduated from one of Canada’s top business schools with “really good grades” – “helps” struggling small businesses with outlandish and absurd marketing ideas.
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who → graduate → ideas
As a Comedy Central production, Nathan For You plays more like a comedy, but there’s an underlying, uneasy persistence to his schemes that foreshadow what he explores later in The Rehearsal.
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he → play → Rehearsal
With his at-once egotistical and excruciatingly insecure vibe, Fielder has an uncanny knack for drawing out his subjects’ inner freak.
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Fielder → have → freak
“Oh, okay,” he says, presenting a neutral lectern before which his subjects espouse bizarre and disturbing ideas.
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subjects → say → ideas
In season one, episode four, an elderly gas station owner explains to Fielder – entirely unprompted – that he drinks his grandson’s pee when he gets scared.
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he → explain → pee
In season two, episode one, a real estate agent recalls a terrifying experience in Switzerland in which she was choked by a ghost, and later succumbs entirely to an on-screen exorcism.
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she → recall → exorcism
These participants reportedly weren’t completely aware of the true nature of what they had signed up for, which might lead you to the same kind of ethical questions presented by The Rehearsal.
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which → sign → Rehearsal
In one episode, a private investigator he’s been trolling spits, “you remind me of the Wizard of Loneliness …
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you → troll → Loneliness
You have no friends, that’s why you’re the Wizard of Loneliness.”
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you → have → Loneliness
The Curse (2023)
The Curse, Fielder’s only fully scripted narrative drama, is our opportunity to see the comedian really act.
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comedian → script → ?
He has said that the persona he presents on The Rehearsal is a genuine but specific version of himself.
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he → say → himself
…and 21 more, not listed.
The Aporia
