Binge-r #278: The Dropout + Joe vs. Carole
Bled Dry: Naveen Andrews (Sunny) and Amanda Seyfried (Elizabeth) in The Dropout
THE DROPOUT
Streaming Service: Disney+
Availability: All eight episodes now streaming
Amanda Seyfried is compelling in this real life drama as Elizabeth Holmes, the Silicon Valley start-up CEO of the now disgraced Theranos who promised to revolutionise health care and is instead currently awaiting sentencing for defrauding investors. Seyfried inhabits not just Holmes, the Stanford dropout who was intent on becoming the next Steve Jobs, but the mindset of a tech scene that worshipped a company’s founder as a visionary and demanded total dedication to the task of changing the world and achieving an eight-figure company valuation (not necessarily in that order). Obstinate, obsessive, and unsure of how to connect with people, Holmes learns her lesson too well: “GTFM,” a tech icon tells her, “Get the fucking money”, so she increasingly fudges and fakes the progress of a toaster-sized machine meant to run hundreds of tests on a single drop of blood.
There has been no shortage of Theranos post-mortems. Binge has the excellent documentary The Inventor, while Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, a character in latter episodes here, followed up his damning scoops with the comprehensive book Bad Blood. The Dropout is based on a podcast, and was adapted by Liz Mereweather, who is best known for the madcap sitcom The New Girl. Framed by a 2017 deposition that is shorn of hope, the story charts Holmes’ journey with uncomfortable insight. It does not excuse her actions, which included accusations of deceiving critically ill patients who trialled various Theranos devices, but it weaves together the pressures and worldview, crucibles and vulnerabilities that tipped her over the edge. Holmes practices her lines, perfects her image, adjusts her vocal tone – it’s a workplace and boardroom performance that she can’t put aside.
Holmes’ foil is Sunny Balwani (Lost’s Naveen Andrews), the older Pakistani-born millionaire who was her secret lover and office enforcer. The couple’s push and pull dynamic is corrosive, enabled by the vicious tactics Theranos was able to use once they became one of the most valuable and celebrated new companies in America. Like Netflix’s Inventing Anna [full review here], another true crime adaptation with a young female protagonist, The Dropout is more detailed and astute than the grifter romp the source material suggests. It looks equally at Holmes as a young woman in a man’s world, as a personality desperate for self-expression – her private connection to music and dance is fierce – and a body willing to adopt a new form. There are more verdicts here than just guilty or not guilty.
Kitty Litter: John Cameron Mitchell (Joe Exotic) in Joe vs. Carole
JOE VS. CAROLE (Stan, all eight episodes now streaming): Netflix has milked the Tiger King [full review here] franchise dry, with unnecessary subsequent seasons of the hit 2020 true crime documentary, but there’s welcome perspective – plus all matter of looniness – in this absurd but intriguing dramatised retelling of how two rivals in the big cat scene, Oklahoma zoo owner Joe Exotic (John Cameron Mitchell) and Florida sanctuary operator Carole Baskin (Kate McKinnon), went claws out in their feud. All the jaw-dropping details from the show are here – although it’s also a podcast that’s the source material for creator Etan Frankel (Shameless) – including the mullets, the guns, the lawsuits, and Joe and Carole’s many husbands; his concurrent, her’s sequential but shrouded in scandal. The leads play it straight and let the antics carry the comic load, but their performances are attuned to deeper personal currents that actually give sense to their haphazard antics. Joe, in particular, is seen through the lens of being a gay man in America’s conservative heartland who created a persona that could protect him, only to become the kind of person he once feared. It’s lightweight in a good way: deft, enjoyable, and self-aware.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: A win for fans of the western, James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma (2007, 122 minutes) stars Russell Crowe and Christian Bale as respectively a philosophical outlaw and the hardscrabble farmer risking his life to deliver him to justice; a zesty con artist romantic drama, Focus (2015, 104 minutes) is an glinting showcase for Will Smith and Margot Robbie as grifters who plays games with each other.
New on SBS on Demand: The film that showed Hollywood what Nicole Kidman was capable of, Gus Van Sant’s To Die For (1995, 102 minutes) is a prescient black comedy of American ambition, media-driven delusion, and caustic truths with an ensemble cast that spans Buck Henry, Matt Dillon, Illeana Douglas, and a young Joaquin Phoenix
New on Stan: A testament to the commitment of leads Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver, Annette (2021, 140 minutes) is a fantastical musical comedy from unknowable French filmmaker Leos Carax that moves to a distinctly eclectic melody; a Hollywood comedy of middle-aged revenge set in wealthy Manhattan, The First Wives Club (1996, 103 minutes) remains an amusing showcase for Bette Midler, Diane Keaton, and Goldie Hawn.
>> Missed the last BINGE-R? Click here to read about Binge’s warm-hearted but telling comedy Somebody Somewhere and ABC iview’s new Queensland crime drama Troppo.
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