There are people who come out of “You Can See Everything” talking about Elizabeth Holmes, and there are people who come out talking about Nathan Fielder. I for one am part of the second group. I didn’t go see this movie because I was dying to know more about Holmes. I hold little emotional in the infamous story of Theranos, in which Holmes faked the invention of a revolutionary medical device, for which she was convicted of fraud. Mostly, I came to see what all the talk was about.
“You Can See Everything” was a complete and utter secret until it played as a surprise feature at Telluride Film Festival in early September. After that, it’s taken movie culture by storm. The documentary is directed by Jewish Canadian comedian Fielder (who is known for shows like “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal”), and Jewish American documentarist Lance Oppenheim (who recently released his first fictional movie, “Primetime”). The two led a film crew to document Holmes at home in the month before she reported to prison in 2023, at the behest of Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans.
What is explored throughout the film is a mindbender, and, if I’m being honest, an agonizing slog. For the first half hour of the film, I was intrigued. Then for the next hour I was bored to tears. Then for the next hour, I experienced sublimity unlike anything else. Then for the last half hour I liked what I saw and desperately wanted it to be over. The film is three hours long. Not only that, but it’s three hours of people-talking scenes. And you thought “The Odyssey” was hard to get through?
The movie isn’t required to make itself entertaining to everyone. Its purpose is to ignite conversation — to ask questions, and answer them more questions. What will keep this documentary in my mind for a long time is not the easy-to-reach question of Holmes’ character, but how the pursuit and concept of truth deteriorates the more Fielder and Oppenheim investigate her.
I knew two things about this movie going in. First, that it, at first, centers around Holmes’ life in Del Ray, California over the last 34 days before she begins serving jail time. Second, that at some point, Fielder crosses the line from documentarist to subject of his own documentary. Fielder spends time in the family beach house, probing Holmes on her beliefs about Theranos and what her plans are going forward. The camera crew, meanwhile, lurks barely beyond the frame, an encroaching entity that is only sometimes exposed in a wide shot, but is always present.
It’s hard to tell if Fielder is being manipulative in the way he directs conversation, or if he is just using the standard tools in a documentarist’s kit. There’s a hilarious segment where Fielder shows Holmes and Evans the legendary “Who’s on First?” skit, and Holmes spectacularly fails to get the joke. Maybe Fielder included the moment in order to parallel an earlier conversation about the Theranos device. It’s equally possible that Fielder knowingly designed the set up to see if he could get a desired payoff — to get a laugh out of the audience because Abott and Costello fail to get a laugh out of Holmes. Does Fielder wield artistic license in a way that lets him portray Holmes authentically? Or does he abuse it to influence how she is presented?
Fielder has a way of pushing into the realm of the absurd in his interactions with Holmes and Evans. His slight disregard for social norms and lack of shame lets him operate at the level of people who are obviously pathological. He can ask the pushy questions and hold eye contact way longer than is normal… and Holmes and Evans stare right back. The team mostly uses long camera lenses that feel purposefully unsuited to the intimate conversations they film. The background becomes compressed and blurred, the subject’s face blown up and distorted. There’s a whole lot of uncomfortable silence to spend squirming in your seat under Holmes’ wide-eyed, piercing blue gaze.
The truth is, the documentary team has an agenda — and so does the audience. People want to see the “real side” of Holmes so they can compare it to her CEO persona, or even the version of Holmes that is portrayed by Amanda Seyfried in the 2022 Hulu miniseries “The Dropout.” It seems that Fielder and Oppenheim are also trying to reconcile Holmes’ private self with what has been proven about her by external sources.
“The Dropout” is actually brought up a couple times in the film. Early on Fielder convinces Holmes to watch the show, though she is too distraught by seeing another person’s depiction of her to finish it. A difficulty arises much later when it becomes unclear if Fielder is trying to produce the most fair and accurate portrayal of Holmes, or if he is taking advantage of her image for his own narrative goals.
The problem with trying to find the truth, or perhaps trying to prove it, is that conflicting viewpoints in the film transmute “truth” from a known, observable factor into something more wily and subjective. We now live in a world where two people can hold two different sets of truths, two realities, and see their own as just and correct. Whether you believe her to be an utter liar or just holding her own truth, Holmes’ absolute conviction in her own authenticity sells the dilemma.
This paradox only evolves and becomes more troubling in the film’s second half — where the 34 days have long run out, Holmes has now been in jail for two years, and “You Can See Everything” still has an hour and a half to go. This is where things get truly, mind-bogglingly meta, and where I will leave the reader to find out exactly how it does on their own.
Changing the exact details of a story is expected in a work of fiction, but that also leads to people believing in a dramatized version of reality. Meanwhile, the actual documentary slowly begins to question its own ability to deliver the truth when its creator may or may not be changing the story. By the end, not only does Holmes seem more unknowable than ever, but the intentions of those who are supposed to present to us authentic reality are also called into question. And yes, zero answers will be given.
