Source : the age
The Dropout ★★★★★
Unlike the main characters of showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether’s latest show, the just-wrapped, attention-grabbing thriller Furious (Disney+), Elizabeth Holmes was neither a serial killer nor a policewoman with sadomasochistic tendencies, nor a vengeful, alcoholic FBI agent. She’s a rich, WASP businesswoman, but she shares much in common with the types of people Meriwether’s shows trade in.
Holmes, the founder of the medical technology startup Theranos, was the poster-girl for Silicon Valley in the late 1990s and early noughties, when digital disruption, entrepreneurism and vast amounts of capital created the perfect storm to upend numerous industries. For its part, Theranos promised to revolutionise American healthcare with a device that could run hundreds of tests from a single drop of blood from the convenience of a local pharmacy. Except the tech, optimistically called the Edison, never worked. Having once boasted a $9 billion fortune and been the darling of corporate America, Holmes is now serving an 11-year prison sentence.
Like the characters in Furious and other Meriwether shows, Amanda Seyfried’s Holmes is a complicated and conflicted anti-heroine. One who isn’t always easy to like, a trailblazer fighting adversaries who want to cut her down, a self-sabotaging obsessive blinded by hubris, her upbringing and disregard for others.
Simply labelling Holmes a fraud doesn’t capture the dimensions of the character that Seyfried so vividly brings to the screen. It’s worth watching just a snippet of footage of the real Holmes to see how Seyfried nails some of her traits and idiosyncrasies, the darting eyes, the flat voice that sounds like it’s been possessed by a robot, the Insta-friendly smile.
Through her parents (played by Michael Gill and Elizabeth Marvel) and business partner and boyfriend Sunny Bulwani (Naveen Andrews), we perceive Holmes to be an empty, cold and emotionally unavailable woman. It’s a flaw that allows her to treat others ruthlessly and remain nonplussed when the consequences of her flawed invention are laid bare.
The Dropout is more than a rise-and-fall biography. It paints a picture of Silicon Valley workplace culture – chill zones, breakout pods, offices that are fun to work in as long as you ignore the nonstop surveillance – and self-belief. An era when self-made entrepreneurs moved fast and broke things, ran roughshod over rules and regulations, and were rewarded with million-dollar paydays and entrées to the old establishments that once dismissed them as cheeky upstarts. It’s a cautionary tale of what happens when tech entrepreneurs and pliant governments are given free rein to build a world in their image (data centres, anyone?), or when profit is seen as the only marker of success.
The Dropout has the pace and feel of a nervy thriller, of a high-stakes chase, as Holmes and Bulwani race to develop their ambitious gizmo and, later, duck and weave as their house of cards collapses. It’s a wild and exhilarating ride where the viewer’s sympathies are constantly challenged and thwarted.
Gathered around Seyfried and Andrews is a dream ensemble. There’s Alan Ruck as a schmuck businessman who could be a close cousin of his Succession character; Sam Waterston as George Shultz, a former Republican statesman; William H. Macy, unforgettable as an unhinged corporate grifter; Ebon Moss-Bachrach as John Carreyrou, the New York Times reporter who exposed the problems at Theranos, and Stephen Fry playing Theranos’ chief scientist and whistleblower.
Available for the first time on free TV, The Dropout is perhaps even more prescient today than when it debuted in 2022.
The Dropout streams on SBS On Demand, from Sunday, September 13.
