From the opening montage of You Can See Everything, there is the feeling that you’re watching some sort of masterpiece. Or, at the very least, the type of film that’s never been made before and that’s very, very unlikely to ever be made again in any sort of closely approximating way. After all, it’s not every day that disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes sits down for an interview, let alone invites an all-access documentary crew led by Nathan Fielder into her home.
The year is 2023. Having contacted film distribution company A24 in hopes that a documentary on her life will set the record clear before her voice is silenced (sort of—more on that later), Holmes is 34 days away from serving her eleven-year prison sentence for fraud. Naturally, Nathan for You‘s host is exactly the sort of person you want trying to clear your name at the eleventh hour, and alongside Primetime and Spermworld‘s Lance Oppenheim, who co-directs, the ever-game and ever awkward Fielder arrives for an extended stay at the couple’s resort in Del Mar, poking and prodding in an attempt to uncover the truth, and in the uniquely illuminating way that only he can.
Butting heads almost immediately with both Holmes and Billy Evans, the former CEO’s boyfriend and father of her child, Fielder makes it clear right off the bat that he suspects the couple of being guilty of almost everything they’re accused of. And it’s exactly as awkward as it sounds, of course—that’s the whole idea behind enlisting Fielder in the first place. But what makes the film so incredibly interesting is that while his opinion on the couple’s innocence (or lack thereof) doesn’t necessarily change as the three-hour film takes shape, the roles of victim and perpetrator begin to blur in ways that will leave you profoundly confused much in the same way Fielder becomes. As his opinion of Holmes waxes and wanes with his discoveries and realizations, his own integrity becomes a focus.
This is a film that defies easy categorization. It’s a straightforward documentary about Holmes in one sense, and for a little while, and but it’s also a documentary about Billy, a man whose role in both the couple’s relationship and this movie will be in question until the closing frames. (Billy, perhaps the film’s “true” antagonist, is revealed to have wrangled a cut of the film’s box office gross during negotiations, and not only does he possess power of attorney over Holmes, he’s also the person running her X account and making her public statements—something he continues to do to this very day.) It’s a film about trying to find the “truth,” but it’s also a film about how that’s sort of impossible in a post-truth world, one where speaking your version of the facts with the conviction and vigor of those with a clean conscience seems to make the two indistinguishable. And it’s also a film about the impossibility of ever truly being objective when you’re working in the entertainment business, or when you happen to develop a crush on your subject, both of which apply here.
You Can See Everything is the type of film that deserves a far, far deeper dive than I’m going to give it here. You could write a whole essay on how Nathan Fielder’s long-gestating penchant for blurring performance and reality culminates in this incredibly ambitious project, most notably by employing Holmes-portrayal alumni Amanda Seyfried to recreate real-life scenes that took place off camera, which give the film’s focus on exploitation and truth a layer that almost no film in history can truly speak on. (A moment where Seyfried-playing-Holmes ruefully says that she’s sick of having other people speaking for her will make you feel well and truly odd.) You could also pontificate for a great length of time about how You Can See Everything compliments the nihilism of this month’s Digger while simultaneously going even farther than that film attempted, or how it relates to Primetime and Oppenheim’s now trademark ethically questionable approach to treating reality like fiction and vice versa.
Or you could simply focus on how darn funny the movie is. Plenty of people are aware Nathan Fielder is a comedic genius, but are those people walking into this metafictional film noir docudrama expecting to laugh just as frequently as they shiver, two reactions that frequently take place in the same scene? Chemistry is a term that the power of editing has all but rendered useless, and yet Holmes and Fielder develop a relationship here that, in spite of everything, almost feels like more human than anything he’s ever put to screen before.
Is Holmes an evil mastermind out to defraud as many fools as the world offers, or were the statements that lead to her indictment misinterpreted and born from a neurodivergent misunderstanding of semantics? Are her interests in the documentary’s creation purely related to exoneration, or is there a monetary factor at play? Is Fielder actually trying to chase the facts or is he subconsciously willing to fudge his own memories to do his increasingly endearing subject a solid? You Can See Everything is a film that answers all of those questions, but in a way that leaves both interpretations valid and perhaps equally likely. And that’s because, as one will realize by the end of the film, just because you can see everything doesn’t mean you will. The only superlative that can be applied to a story this confounding with any certainty is that it’s nearly perfect—the film of the year and very likely the film of the decade. 10-20-26
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