“You Can See Everything” Is a Documentary Masterpiece

A thousand years ago, knights traversed Europe seeking glory and immortality on righteous quests. Five hundred years later, explorers traveled and mapped the boundaries of the world. In the past century, this adventurous spirit has pushed people beyond their limits into space and underwater, to the peaks of the tallest mountains and the most uninhabitable places on earth. Now, we have Nathan Fielder, questing across the media landscape for new frontiers in conversational awkwardness.

Fielder’s latest reality-warping dare, You Can See Everything, is the masterful culmination of a career steering the kinds of social situations that give most of us nightmares. The subject is in many ways his dark mirror image: a neurodivergent master manipulator who achieved infamy by testing the limits of institutional credulousness, a childlike wunderkind who talked some of the wealthiest and most famous people in the world into making terrible business choices. It seems almost too perfect.

Thanks to her personality, her crimes, and probably a few other qualities, Elizabeth Holmes has become one of America’s most treasured villains. It’s hard to find things we can all agree upon in the world today, but Holmes’s example satisfies a wide spectrum of bloodlust. She’s a former billionaire CEO whose crimes hurt her rich investors, her working-class employees, and the ordinary people whom her company, Theranos, gave false health information. She worshiped at the altar of single-minded visionaries like Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison but accumulated all their baggage before she ever delivered her light bulb or iPhone. Fume at Jeff Bezos all you want—he’ll never get his comeuppance. Elizabeth Holmes’s 11 years in jail for fraud is the closest you’re likely to get.

Elizabeth Holmes in You Can See Everything. Courtesy of A24

How the hell did Nathan Fielder of all people wind up in Holmes’s house with a camera crew and 24/7 access in the month leading up to her incarceration? He asks this very question to Holmes and her fiancé, Billy Evans, more than once. You Can See Everything offers some explanations, but it feels similar to the way Tim Robinson and Jon Wilson ended up at that Kim Kardashian dinner in The History of Concrete. Jesters were once the only figures who could tease the king. There’s a certain credibility you get from inviting that kind of unsparing scrutiny: Look at me—I can take a joke because I have nothing to hide.

How much danger is there, then, of Fielder’s presence somehow rehabilitating Holmes’s image despite the severity of her crimes? And on the flip side, how do you monitor someone 24/7, especially during such a stressful moment of their life, without exploiting them? Fielder’s work has always played with these dynamics. With Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, he exploited the inherent absurdities of California’s reality television infrastructure and American capitalism to create ridiculous and often very poignant situations.

You Can See Everything occasionally does feel exploitative, and it certainly made me feel more, let’s say … empathetic for Holmes. However, rather than avoid potential pitfalls, it calls them out and amplifies them. Yes, it often shows that autobiographical filmmaking can be exploitative, and yes, it gives a platform to people whose priorities may not align well with the audience or filmmaker’s priorities. When you choose to watch any documentary or reality TV show, it’s an inherent part of the bargain; there’s no real way to opt out. The response of Fielder and codirector Lance Oppenheim is to highlight these contradictions and make them the central focus of their project.

Lance Oppenheim

And, it turns out, Nathan Fielder is the exact, perfect person to interview Elizabeth Holmes. A man who can keep a straight face while staging a traditional Jewish funeral for a fly is a man unlikely to succumb to the usual social pressure that keeps people from asking hard questions. As much as Fielder’s hyperreal antics can feel like the polar opposite of sincerity, they work that way in this context. He doesn’t need to prove intention here. He just needs to leverage his absolute lack of a social gag reflex to continue asking what seems to the audience like the next reasonable question—the question we would ask if we were present and entirely unafraid.

It’s fascinating watching his gears turn, looking for a way to push past Holmes’s and Evans’s many deflections while not appearing dismissive or combative. Fielder’s specialties are comedy and magic, so it makes sense he finds metaphors with David Blaine and Abbott and Costello. Watching his efforts both bounce off and alchemize Holmes’s carefully crafted image and life transforms You Can See Everything from a lurid dare into a masterpiece of human subjectivity.

Before watching the film, I was certain Holmes was guilty and lying. When the film was over, I was certain she was guilty and lying. My opinion on the important points never changed. Instead, the movie expanded my definition of reality and asked me why I’m so eager to see someone as a one-dimensional villain. What’s lost when we simplify reality for even morally justifiable reasons.

The editing and camerawork perfectly highlight relevant details within the drama. One example: Holmes and Evans have their infant child in most of the interviews, and the film amplifies the baby’s audio in almost every scene. When Fielder asks a hard question, they suddenly act like the baby is being fussy and use her as an excuse to walk away. But because of the audio, we know the baby is doing what she’s been doing the whole scene. Holmes and Evans just use her as an excuse when they don’t want to talk anymore. Straight answers are hard to come by, but all the tools of obfuscation are on clear display.

Courtesy of A24

The less you know going into You Can See Everything, the better. I’ll only say that the last hour, which turns the film’s whole premise on its head, transforms You Can See Everything into my favorite film so far this year and one of the greatest documentaries I’ve ever seen. The almost three-hour run time may be off-putting to some, especially for a film built around awkward conversations, but my primary feeling as I felt the film drawing to a close was sadness. I wanted to know more. Just like all the people who buy the tabloids with photos taken by the vulture-like photographers who document Holmes’s every move. Just like when I want to spend more time with a close friend. Somehow, the film draws a line between those two feelings, and I’m left to figure out where I land in between.

Last week, I bought a T-shirt. I don’t buy a lot of joke T-shirts, but this one really called to me. It looks like a NASCAR design, only the driver is Elizabeth Holmes, and the car features the Theranos logo. I found it funny for a number of reasons. I’m fascinated by Holmes and what she reveals about the cold-blooded ethos of Silicon Valley. There’s probably not much difference between her and many of the prominent business figures who are sincerely celebrated in popular culture and maybe even on T-shirts. Well, this documentary made me think twice about it. I don’t know whether I want to wear that shirt after all. But if I do, the conversations I have while wearing it will be significantly more nuanced and open-minded.

You Can See Everything is a gift of a film that makes you feel that way without glorifying or demonizing its subject. Ultimately, it is about glorification, demonization, and the many ways people evaluate and deceive each other. The title, a statement drawn from a text message, becomes a question as the film advances. Can you see everything? How do you interpret what you see, and why? Whatever your answers, in this moment of mass media and deep, often violent social divisions, the questions feel worth considering.