At nearly three hours in length, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s You Can See Everything is a staggering, unnerving documentary about Silicon Valley and the complex question of whether one can truly know another person. The film centers on Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who granted the filmmakers unprecedented access for approximately one month before her prison sentence began in 2023. However, the movie expands its scope beyond Holmes' culpability to explore cults of personality and cultural mythologies, while also examining Fielder's own creative output and television persona.
The film's total impact feels greater than the sum of its parts, largely due to its eerie filmmaking style and the ambitious scope of its self-reflexive cinema. Shot with suffocating 4:3 close-ups and long lenses, and frequently awash in shadow, the movie's form evokes a sense of invasive surveillance, despite its composition of static conversations—a remarkable sleight of hand.
You Can See Everything initially unfolds at a beachside home in San Diego, where Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans, are residing. The narrative is reintroduced through news clips that score footage of Holmes' daily life, serving as a "previously on" segment detailing her conviction for fraud. During one such segment, as an anchor utters the phrase “pathological liar,” the camera shifts to Fielder, who appears in the corner of the frame.
Fielder's awkward, lumbering presence in this domestic setting, complete with headphones perpetually around his neck, creates a stark contrast with the unsettling zooms into empty spaces and the expressions of those present. As Holmes and Evans tend to their young children, Fielder engages them in intimate sit-downs and brief conversations, probing their lives and history.
With color saturation pushed to an uncanny edge, Holmes' deep blue eyes become a focal point for Fielder. He appears both taken by her charm and thoroughly unconvinced by her claims of innocence. The film grants her an enormous benefit of the doubt regarding her seemingly miraculous device, allowing Fielder to unravel a tightly wound narrative thread that ultimately implicates Holmes and Evans.
As Fielder becomes more entwined with the couple, the film invites comparisons to Holmes' own manipulative tendencies, with Fielder's television character acting as a subtle nudger of subjects. While Fielder's goal is entertainment, Holmes' objective is financial investment, a pursuit she continues even as her prison sentence looms.
The visual framing establishes a palpable tension between Fielder and Holmes, while also crafting a compelling portrait of Evans as a potential puppet master. The film leaves open the question of whether Holmes is allowing him to direct her actions or if she is even aware of his influence. The documentary gradually shifts to become about its own making and finances, offering some of its most exhilarating developments and demonstrating a desire to showcase every dimension of its creation.
The film's substantial runtime becomes self-evident in its second half. The central question of who Holmes truly is—a deceiver in denial, someone in the throes of delusion, or perhaps someone crafting an act—remains hauntingly open-ended. This uncertainty imbues the film with a disquieting perspective on the tech moguls influencing modern life and compels Fielder to seek an alternative view into Holmes' mind from a surprising ally.
While the identity of this ally may not be surprising to those familiar with portrayals of Holmes or Fielder's work, the film remains remarkably unpredictable. It creates circumstances where individuals are prompted to uncomfortably watch and reflect on transcripts and existing footage. This celebrity figure becomes a co-conspirator in Fielder's investigation, engaging in revealing conversations that underscore the journey's frustrations.
As the questions surrounding Holmes and Evans grow more labyrinthine, the movie evolves into an astonishing mise en abyme, employing Rehearsal-like re-enactments. These are designed not only to fill gaps left by Holmes' incarceration but to utilize cinematic tools to mine for any and all possible truths. It mirrors Fielder's experimental approach, yet remains shocking with each turn, blurring the lines between what is seen and heard and what was actually captured.
The possibility of the production collapsing due to a revoked access always looms, exacerbated by Fielder's increasingly confrontational on-screen persona. His provocations serve a deep human search for not only who Holmes is but why she is—a mystery that intensifies with each new piece of information and as Fielder draws closer. It offers a sympathetic look at an individual who, despite the harm she has caused, appears determined to persist and re-enact the past, a trait not unlike Fielder himself.
The result is wildly captivating, constructed from creeping close-ups and stealthy investigations into the minds driving modern tech industries. It stands as one of the year's most electric and enrapturing films, and by its conclusion, its 174-minute runtime may feel insufficient.
You Can See Everything presents an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object as Nathan Fielder investigates Elizabeth Holmes. This enormous, affecting documentary, co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, utilizes claustrophobic close-ups and surprising re-enactments to construct a sympathetic portrait that could represent anything from denial to delusion—or perhaps a deliberate performance to convince the audience it is one or the other.