You Can See Everything is the kind of movie that comments on itself throughout its nearly three-hour runtime. Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the documentary follows Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos who became one of Silicon Valley’s most notorious figures after her company’s claims about its blood-testing technology fell apart.
Thirty-four days before reporting to prison, Holmes invited a film crew into her home to document her final days of freedom. That crew included Fielder, whose presence makes this an unusual opportunity to say the least.
The first hour is packed with fascinating moments as Fielder gets access to Holmes and her personal life. You might think you have a pretty good idea of what kind of documentary you’re watching. Then you look at the runtime and realize there are still nearly two hours left. That’s when the filmmakers begin pulling apart the very idea of documentary filmmaking.
We tend to approach documentaries with a certain expectation. The people on screen are real and the camera is there to show us what took place. We may understand that editing and perspective influence what we see, but there’s still an assumption that we’re watching some version of the truth.
What Fielder and Oppenheim seem to be getting at is that even when a filmmaker tries to show us everything, there’s no way to capture the whole picture. The director’s choices and the way footage is assembled all become part of the story.
The film also brings Hulu’s The Dropout into the conversation in a particularly interesting way. The series, starring Amanda Seyfried as Holmes, dramatized the Theranos story, and its existence becomes part of the documentary’s examination of how people are portrayed. We have the real Elizabeth Holmes, the version of Holmes presented to the public, and the version created for television. Watching those different representations collide makes an already complicated movie even more fascinating.
I wouldn’t call You Can See Everything groundbreaking, and I didn’t come away feeling that it delivered a series of major “gotcha” moments. The subject matter is already familiar to anyone who followed the Theranos scandal.
What I found most interesting was how the movie never lets you forget that you’re watching a documentary, even when its scenes are composed and presented with the polish of a narrative feature. It constantly makes you consider who is shaping the story and what might be happening just outside the frame.
Part of Nathan Fielder’s appeal is the way he inserts himself into the situations he’s trying to document. He’s a filmmaker and comedian with a peculiar ability to make people laugh without them necessarily understanding why they’re laughing.
His presence can turn an ordinary interaction into something deeply uncomfortable, funny, or both. That quality is very much at work here, and the film is willing to examine Fielder’s role in the proceedings as closely as it examines Holmes.
You Can See Everything often spellbinds you, even when you’re not entirely sure what you’re watching or where the filmmakers are taking you.
It has a lot to say about documentary filmmaking, the people who appear in documentaries, and the people behind the camera. Whether you come away feeling that you’ve learned more about Elizabeth Holmes is another question. By the time the movie ends, you may be wondering how much of anything you really got to see.
