It’s easy to go into the mind-blowing documentary You Can See Everything from directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim and assume you’re going to get fresh insights into who Elizabeth Holmes is and whether or not the charismatic but controversial Theranos founder deserved an 11-year prison sentence after being convicted of defrauding investors. It’s right there in the title. You, the viewer, get to see everything. Nothing will be hidden. It will all be there on the screen.
But seeing isn’t always understanding. Don’t let the title fool you.
Fielder — invited by Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans, to document her last 34 days of freedom before she reports to a federal prison in Texas and to ask any question he wants, no restrictions — quickly discovers truth isn’t that easy to ascertain, no matter how unprecedented the access to the person at the center of a complicated mystery. Is he being conned? Are the pair putting on an elaborate act to engender Fielder’s empathy, so he’ll deliver a sympathetic portrait of Holmes? Or is she still convinced she did nothing wrong?
In all my years as a critic — heck, as a movie lover going back to my childhood — I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like what Fielder and Oppenheim have delivered. Holmes and Evans seemingly do not keep Fielder from recording whatever he wants to, even inviting him to live with them in the guesthouse of their beachside California rental until they have to move to Texas. His cameras don’t miss anything. They’re everywhere.
During these 34 days, Fielder asks Holmes every conceivable question. He tests her knowledge and recollections of what Theranos was doing. The filmmaker pushes her to admit that the small device, billed as able to run a myriad of blood tests with only a finger prick and drop of blood, couldn’t really do what she claimed, only for Holmes to remain steadfast in her belief in the validity of her past statements.
One of the documentary’s best moments is when Fielder introduces Holmes to Bud Abbott and Lou Costello’s iconic “Who's on First?” comedy routine. This makes perfect sense when juxtaposed with Holmes’s comments on the Theranos device. Watching her react to the routine, immediately followed by her understanding as to why it is funny, is otherworldly. And yet, you can’t help but wonder: is this response genuine? Or is she playing Fielder in some way, to confuse him as to why she seemingly can’t change a syllable of her description of the device’s viability?
But this half of the film, for all its raw frankness and (quite literally) naked urgency, isn’t nearly as groundbreaking as what happens next. After Holmes goes to prison, Fielder investigates for two more years and things take a stunning turn. Revelations about Evans cloud everything. Conversations between the documentarian and his subject suddenly need to be reenacted (and reevaluated). Docu-fact and docudrama collide head-on when Holmes’s husband and a Hollywood personality meet in the former’s Texas home and get into a fiery debate.
There's more, much more. But the surprises Fielder has in store should be expirienced with as little foreknowledge as possible. At the film’s core, however, is an examination of how public discourse and perception shape reality and, like that famous speech in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance made clear in 1962, when the legend becomes fact, that’s what gets printed (and subsequently indelibly imprinted upon the public consciousness).
But what happens to fact after that? Fielder realizes he’s been shaped by public perception as much as anyone. Whether that’s through the news media or by watching an Emmy-winning docudrama, he’s made assumptions about Holmes that he’s struggling to reconcile, now that he’s started to get to know her. Her story has, in a strange way, become his. Moreover, it’s also become the audience’s, as what Fielder has learned throughout this surreal enterprise has more to do with society and humanity at large, especially in this digital age, than Theranos or its founder.
All of this puts the filmmakers in a tight spot. Fielder breaks one of the cardinal rules of documentary storytelling and becomes a character in the very true-life drama he’s attempting to document. But decisions are made even earlier that also cloud the issue, ones that force the film’s producers and its distributor, A24, to determine if subject accessibility is worth the cost of obtaining it. Things are murky long before Fielder takes up residence with Holmes, Evans, and the pair’s two children; the reveal as to why this is the case is a giant slap in the face to all involved (including the audience) is guaranteed to leave a permanent mark.
Events culminate in a conversation with Holmes two years into her Texas incarceration. It’s reenacted, as cameras and recording devices are not allowed inside the prison. Fielder tries to bring clarity to everything he’s witnessed, but even this ends up subject to interpretation. He can’t decide on the exact wording of all they discussed, and he and his reenactment partner diligently work overtime on every syllable of the script before performing this interview for the audience’s consumption.
And maybe that is the point. No matter how hard you try, no matter how deep you dig, sometimes the truth isn’t as clear or as obvious as it may seem. As for seeing everything, the only way to do that is to look into the mirror and understand that, no matter how much you want to, no matter how hard you try, you’re not always going to like what you see. What’s looking back at you might still be an illusion.
You Can See Everything isn’t just one of the best films of the year; it’s one of the greatest of the 21st century.
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