Maybe I'm missing something here, but I fail to see anything that seems particularly "wild" in a film featuring a bunch of insipid mind games. Mind games are not exactly new or fascinating, you find them almost everywhere you go these days.
There is no longer any mystery about Holmes. As everyone already knows, she was a fraudster convicted of criminal fraud. The whole story of Theranos has been covered at length in the press, including an award-winning book that was published several years ago [0].
This so-called documentary seems like another reality show featuring a former celebrity with little self-awareness, who is incapable of seeing how absurd and ridiculous she appears now that she is no longer powerful.
[0] John Carreyrou (2018) Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, Knopf
>a former celebrity with little self-awareness, who is incapable of seeing how absurd and ridiculous she appears now that she is no longer powerful...
As someone who has seen it, there's simply no way both of these descriptions of her are true. If you believe that she's guilty of everything she's accused of doing, she's incredibly self-aware and her entire participation in this movie is a desperate Hail Mary attempt to save face in the court of public opinion. At one point in the movie Fielder is having a conversation with another person and says something along the lines of "She's either innocent or maybe the most manipulative person in human history". The movie isn't as concerned with a true journalistic investigation of her guilt or innocence, there are better accounts of that elsewhere and plenty of people who can tell that story better than Fielder. What he seems to be most interested in is the absurd commitment to she has to her claimed innocence and how effective that is or isn't.
There was a mountain of evidence against Holmes, and she was convicted in a criminal trial. So it seems like a safe assumption that she was guilty.
Does it follow then that, because she is almost certainly guilty, that she must be "incredibly self-aware"? Of course not. It's just as likely that she is totally lacking in self-awareness, and that she simply does not know when to shut her mouth because she has no idea how stupid she sounds.
No, because she doesn't sound "stupid" in the movie. The mountain of evidence against her is so extreme that being able to carve out any narrative in which her innocence has any plausibility requires such a calculated and well constructed plan that is shows a high level of social intelligence and self-control. Fielder literally lives with her 24/7 for weeks and her mask doesn't slip. You don't have to believe her story to recognize she's not a "stupid" person who "does not know when to shut her mouth".
According to your theory, Elizabeth Holmes proves herself to be an intelligent person simply because she is able to come up with a plausible narrative. Of course, I have no doubt that she and her defense lawyers made up some narrative to justify her actions and make her appear innocent. That's what lawyers do, and she is evidently smart enough to memorize and perform the script her lawyers wrote for her. It's the same with any criminal trial: whenever a defendant pleads "not guilty," the defense team must find a plausible narrative they can use to refute the evidence. But this does not require "a calculated and well constructed plan that shows a high level of social intelligence and self-control" on the part of the defendant. All it requires is a defendant who is able to learn the narrative written by the attorneys.
And when you say that "her mask doesn't slip," that merely shows that she is a reasonably good actor. It does not mean that she is innocent or intelligent.
My point is simply this: Elizabeth Holmes is nothing more than a liar and a fraud. There's absolutely nothing about her that is different from all the other con men and fraudsters sitting in jail or prison. Based on all the rapturous reviews about this so-called documentary, maybe Holmes is indeed a talented liar and fraudster, but that hardly makes her special or different from all the other criminals convicted of similar crimes. It only means that, at most, she may be slightly more convincing than the others.
But when her speech and her behavior in the film are understood in the context of the evidence against her, it is obvious that she is lying and that she is probably not very bright. This documentary does not improve her image. It only makes her look foolish.
Have you actually seen the movie? You seem to be talking around that question in an almost Holmesian manner. Because this statement is incredibly definitive to a degree that is bordering on objectively wrong. I mean "absolutely nothing"?. At the very least, she's a lot weirder than your average conman. The simple act of selecting Nathan Fielder for this project is a bizarre choice that shows something unique about her.