The movie is way more fun if you identify with Seyfried because the second half…is a detective movie! One about a plucky and talented outsider whose enthusiasm to unravel a mystery, and whose conflicted sympathy for a dominated woman who may be a femme fatale, gets her sucked into the deep end with a more experienced older detective, with her arc ending in a disillusioned coldness towards her partner/mentor as she realizes he is compromised and that she has been used. A classic kind of story. Whether or not Seyfried is playing ‘Seyfried’ is secondary for me next to how this documentary shifts into a genre thriller without telling you. And like any genre thriller, the thing is more pleasurable if you don’t watch it clinically but get right in there with the POV character.
Do we really need spoilers at this point in the discussion? Perhaps a warning at the very beginning of the thread would be better: anything you hear or read about the movie is potentially a spoiler so just see it before you dive into the discussion.
The only thing I read before seeing the film (outside of the fact that it was supposed to be a a 24/7 document of her last hours before going to jail) was
Spoiler
the mention of a possible best actress award for a documentary. When I first read this I assumed it was a joke about Elizabeth Holmes & so it didn't actually spoil the 2nd half for me, I was surprised that she was going off to prison so soon & had to check my watch to verify that we weren't close to the 3 hr. point. Had I read anymore it probably would have spoiled the surprise of the second half.
I think the “spoiler”—which I would argue is the only thing about this movie that can be spoiled—is something that would have been a lot of fun for me to discover when it happens. Instead, it was the only thing I knew about the film when I went into it, and it made me assume something about the film that did not actually happen.
You don’t need spoiler tags because you’ve already seen it. Why not err on the side of caution for those who haven’t seen it yet so they can have the best viewing experience possible?
