Leaving the theater after seeing Nathan Fielder’s brilliant Elizabeth Holmes documentary, I didn’t know what to make of it. I think that is what you are supposed to make of it.

I couldn’t tell if Holmes was for real, if her husband was for real, or even if Nathan Fielder was for real or playing a caricature of himself. Liz, a person distinct from the “character I created” (a somewhat damning New York Times quote that she disputes) says she doesn’t want to relitigate her conspiracy and wire fraud convictions for lying to Theranos investors. Of course, the documentary is clearly intended to relitigate them. Indeed, I walked out of the film believing that there was some chance Elizabeth Holmes just miscommunicated to investors when she claimed her technology “can” perform hundreds of diagnostic tests. Maybe she did just mean theoretically, in the future, her invention could perform those tests. Maybe we have misunderstood Liz.

I also walked out wondering if maybe Liz’s love with hopitality-business heir Billy Evans, who creepily makes all sorts of decisions about her life without her knowledge or consent, was real and romantic in a way we cannot understand, in the same way she couldn’t understand Abbott and Costello’s famous “Who’s on First?” (The Theranos CEO looked genuinely baffled when she didn’t know that Who was the name of the baseball player at first base.) And maybe Nathan Fielder was genuinely dropping his guard, swimming in cold water with her despite his fears. Maybe he actually did want to kiss her, right before she left for prison, and wasn’t just manufacturing a cinematically awkward scene.

The film appears to explore a theme of questioning whether we can know anything, even when we can see everything. Perhaps it is impossible to tell the manipulator from the manipulated. And yet.

There are moments, however, when the film lets you in on the fact that Nathan Fielder is not just some postmodern commentator demonstrating that there is no truth, or that truth is just perception. For example, when Holmes’ husband Billy Evans takes the eggs Liz is stirring away from her, he says ‘I just want her to be able to concentrate on talking to you.’ Elizabeth then states the real truth — ‘he doesn’t think I mix the eggs quickly enough and doesn’t like how it tastes.’ Truth exists; some people just do not care to tell it.

Indeed, reading reviews of this incredible documentary (I didn’t even want to get up to use the bathroom during this three-hour movie, because I didn’t want to miss a single second) has been illuminating. Elizabeth Holmes didn’t just misuse the word can; she made very specific, false statements that the military was using her technology, among other lies. Billions were invested in a product that didn’t work. Patients were harmed. Holmes and her husband do not want to relitigate her crimes because they will lose that battle. Instead, they want to show you her being a mother, walking on the beach; it’s almost too cliche to bear, and yet that is the genius of the movie.

In the end, you are given enough clues to know that Holmes and Evans are far too evasive to be telling the complete truth, and that truth does exist. Holmes is asked a direct question about whether she knew Amanda Seyfried, who played her in Hulu’s The Dropout, would be visiting her home. “I don’t know,” she said to Seyfriend. How does one not know the answer to that question? Coincidentally, it’s also what Holmes says when asked what she thinks went wrong, if she is innocent. (Side question: Is Amanda Seyfried for real, or is she also playing a character of herself even as she plays a character of Elizabeth Holmes.)

Of course, maybe the story is more complex, and maybe the narrative has been simplified. I think on many levels we have all misunderstood Liz. Maybe the New York Times got her quote wrong. Maybe others created this false character, not that she created a false character herself. Certainly, I have lost faith in journalists for outfits including the New York Times, whose raison d’etre is to put truth above agenda and have often forgotten that charge. (Although Liz and Billy claim they have the entire NY Times interview recorded, when Nathan asks to hear it, Billy then says he hasn’t listened to the entire thing.) Nathan Fielder shines a light on how documentaries, like newspapers, can also skew the truth. That is why Amanda Seyfried asks his Nathan Fielder “character” if perhaps he has left damning footage out of the movie to protect Liz. When we care too much about the outcome of things, we can manipulate the truth.

I am a professor who studies the First Amendment. I believe profoundly in the idea that the marketplace of ideas gets us closest to the truth. This documentary questions and searches and exposes so many different perspectives on the life of Elizabeth Holmes, not because it wants you to conclude that the truth is unknowable, but because we cannot give up the fight to keep searching. I am still left with so many questions (for example, did the studio really allow Billy Evans to sign a contract about the movie without Elizabeth Holmes participating or even knowing?). Do not forget that just because some things are unknown, that does not mean everything is unclear or equally true.