Before last Thursday, I didn’t know much about Elizabeth Holmes or Nathan Fielder, who took the internet by storm with his docu-comedy series “Nathan for You” (2013-2017) and “The Rehearsal” (2022-present). But I went to see “You Can See Everything” — the viral new documentary by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Holmes — anyway, mainly because every single person I follow on Letterboxd had rated it five stars. After watching it myself, I can confirm that all of them are correct: This really might be the best movie I’ve seen all year.
Fielder and Oppenheim expertly deconstruct the documentary genre, prompting us to take a hard look at what we think is true and what is actually true. When I think of a documentary, I’m usually able to accept what is presented at face value; the filmmaker has done the work of collecting evidence and offering analysis, so all I need to do is decide whether I agree with their conclusion.
“In “You Can See Everything,” the filmmakers don’t know what’s real either. At times, the film feels like “Inception,” each act diving deeper into a new layer of Fielder and Oppenheim’s dreamworld.”
But in “You Can See Everything,” the filmmakers don’t know what’s real either. At times, the film feels like “Inception,” each act diving deeper into a new layer of Fielder and Oppenheim’s dreamworld.
The first act of the documentary depicts Holmes, her husband Billy Evans and their two young kids in San Diego during her final weeks before going to federal prison. But Fielder, I soon realized, is just as much a main character as Holmes. He moves in with Holmes and we watch him integrate into her family life, all while pursuing the truth about Theranos and its disastrous, fraudulent decline. Fielder, who is well known for playing fictionalized versions of himself, presents himself as an objective investigator.
It quickly becomes evident that this is no easy task for Fielder, as Holmes steadfastly maintains that she never lied to anyone. The question the film interrogates becomes whether this is a lie as well.
Each time Fielder pulled Holmes aside for an interview, I found myself wanting to trust her. She seems so genuine, eyes wide and face placid, almost trustworthy to the point of suspicion. It was difficult to imagine that everyone could have gotten her story wrong, but once I started believing it, it was hard to go back. The film’s initial conclusion seems to be that she’s just faking it all for the cameras. But as days turned into weeks with Fielder watching her 24/7, this theory of her innocence became less and less plausible, and we’re put right back at square one.
The film’s visual style compounds this disorienting effect. The frequent close-ups in the cinematography contribute to this sense of unease and inability to tell what is real or fabricated. When anyone is speaking, we’re only looking at their eyes, so it becomes difficult to truly grasp what is happening. You’re immediately thrown into the deep end of this surreal, dreamlike world.
My attempts to search Holmes’ face for truth were thwarted by this disconcerting, albeit very visually interesting, technique. When her wide blue eyes stared at me, taking up a huge percentage of an already giant screen, it felt as though she was staring right through the camera into a blank void. I couldn’t put my finger on her expressions, leaving me grasping at threads. As the film continues, this unsettling sensation of not being able to detect the lies only heightened.
Lulled into a false sense of security by the relatively straightforward first act, my jaw fell open as Fielder took it up a notch. In the second hour, he introduced actor Amanda Seyfried, who played Holmes in Hulu’s 2022 series “The Dropout,” making her a perfect accomplice. She starts out as just another perspective, a commentator who is intimately familiar with Holmes’ story.
That’s not the part that had me sitting straight up in the plush AMC recliners, though. Where it starts to get weird is when Fielder brings Seyfried back to Holmes’ house and has her recreate events that happened before cameras were introduced.
Once again, I saw Fielder sit down at the kitchen table in that cozy, San Diego cottage across from someone whom I expected to lie. Except this time, I knew that what I was witnessing was an actor reading from a script. It was enthralling to study Seyfried’s face and compare her movements to Holmes’, trying to find the proof of deceit in this reenactment that was hidden before, watching another layer be added to the already-labyrinthine film.
Seyfried’s reenactments offer us a glimpse beyond Holmes’ facade for the cameras, into the actual person Fielder got to know. The only issue is that everything is now coming directly from Fielder’s mind, and he is as lost as we are.
This is when the film went from good to great for me. Up until Seyfried’s appearance, “You Can See Everything” had been a typical documentary with interesting cinematography. When Seyfried was first introduced, I started to get suspicious.
When Fielder took her to meet Holmes’ husband and they got into a shouting match over him posting incredibly offensive things on her social media, I actually lost my mind. For the first time, someone is finally reacting in a rational way — giving a voice, it seemed, to what I and many other audience goers wanted to reach through the screen and say. Seyfried is refusing to buy into the nonsense narrative that Billy is pushing, which felt incredibly jarring after nearly two hours of Fielder’s subtler interrogation style. I cheered internally as she called him out, congratulating her on not being taken in by all the lies.
Additionally, because she wasn’t in San Diego with the initial film crew, Seyfried was able to remain separate from Holmes’ magnetic orbit, unlike Fielder. As Fielder’s objectivity is seemingly compromised by his entanglement with Holmes, Seyfried’s role shifts, and there are several scenes where she becomes the interviewer herself.
This is where the crux and true genius of the film lies. Documentaries are often seen as pillars of truth, wholly objective reflections of reality. We’re not meant to question what we are being told by those in them — but “You Can See Everything” puts us in a position to do just that.
The latter half of the documentary pulls back the film reel to prove that even Fielder’s perspective cannot be wholly believed — nor, even, can any filmmaker’s. It’s a powerful reminder of the impossibility of objectivity, but also the value of critical thinking, which is becoming increasingly important in a world rampant with social media and chatbots. If you only see one movie this fall, I implore you to make it “You Can See Everything.”
Maggie McAteer SC ’30 spends too much time going down rabbit holes on Wikipedia and scrolling through Letterboxd reviews for movies she hasn’t seen. Catch her at the local AMC every weekend to make the most of the A-List subscription draining her bank account.
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