Review: “You Can See Everything” dismantles documentary conventions
In Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s new documentary, “You Can See Everything,” the question the film asks is whether you really can. The filmmakers start by peeling back the layers of the onion that is convicted fraudster and former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, but it quickly becomes something much more interesting than one of the most well-known corporate scandals in recent history.
I can’t talk about what that is without spoiling moments that had my jaw on the floor, but I will warn readers: this is an absolutely incredible film to see knowing as little as possible. If you plan on seeing this, I strongly recommend going in blind.
“You Can See Everything” was filmed in secret and surprise-released at the Telluride Film Festival on Sept. 6, with the theatrical release coming a month later on Oct. 16. For roughly the first half of the film, it is a relatively standard documentary. Holmes was the youngest self-made female billionaire and the CEO of a company called Theranos that promised to revolutionize blood testing, before she was found guilty of defrauding investors and wire fraud. The film picks up 34 days before she is set to begin her prison sentence, after she and her partner Billy Evans invited the filmmakers into their San Diego home.
Holmes herself is the most interesting part of the documentary. When the first teaser was released, her unblinking stare and blank delivery of “Why would I deceive you? There’s no reason for me to do that,” instantly went viral. That question is one that drives the documentary. She’s dropped the deep-voiced persona she adopted as the Theranos CEO, but is this the real Holmes? Despite the title, there is no way to tell.
The conflict of the first act revolves around the story Holmes and Evans want to tell — a woman who is innocent — and what Fielder and Oppenheimer are trying to find — who Holmes is, and why she defrauded the investors in Theranos. However, she is insistent she did nothing wrong.
According to her, when she said her blood testing machine can run any test, she meant it had the possibility to, not that it was able to. It’s a pretty flimsy excuse, but then the documentary has a scene of Fielder showing the couple the classic comedy bit “Who’s on First,” where the central joke is also based around semantics. The central joke is one character asking “Who’s on first?” and the other answering “Yes,” because the name of the player is Who. When Holmes doesn’t understand the joke, which is rooted in how one word can mean two things, you wonder whether she actually believes her reasoning.
Even the details of their daily life create a concerning and confusing picture of Holmes. The couple have two children and a dog, but the documentary almost never shows them spending time together in ways that parents and children normally do.
The most jarring moment of that teaser mentioned earlier was when the scene cuts from close shots of their faces to Holmes rocking a baby cradle with her foot, barely paying attention while staring at Fielder with wide eyes. It almost portrays her as a horror villain, with facial expressions that seem frozen on her face.
Her personality raises the question of what is left of a human after a public persona that is so false is stripped away. The Holmes in the documentary is a completely different person than the Holmes who charmed investors with a deep voice and black turtlenecks that deliberately evoked Steve Jobs.
It parallels Fielder’s deadpan comedic persona that is nearly never dropped, where he is deliberately awkward in order to enhance the social experiment style of his television shows. For both, it makes it all the more jarring when they break character — showing a Holmes antithetical to the public image and a Fielder that is bewildered by the events and actions he witnesses.
While the exploration of Holmes’ psychology is incredibly compelling, the film kicks itself to another level after a time jump. After Holmes starts her prison sentence, the filmmakers pick up two years later, while also jumping back to reframe original events.
Fielder reveals that Evans had asked for compensation to allow the documentary to film, which is incredibly uncommon for documentaries. His attempts to control the narrative, which were subtle at the beginning of the film, become more overt after Holmes is in prison and can no longer speak for herself. With power of attorney, Evans has been sending tweets under her name, creating an AI model of her and saying that they have such a close relationship that he doesn’t even need to consult her.
As the prison does not allow filming their meeting, or even recording the phone conversations, the filmmakers opted to have Amanda Seyfried play Holmes in reenactments. Seyfried, who previously portrayed Holmes in the Hulu series “The Dropout,” acts as an audience surrogate who is not connected to either the subjects of the documentary or the filmmakers. However, she also plays a role in the various layers of Holmes.
Holmes’ public image was affected by the series, which Seyfried defends by saying she was playing a fictionalized version of Holmes. However, when Holmes says that she has been mistreated by inmates because of the series, Seyfried’s argument falls apart. Additionally, when Seyfried plays Holmes in the reenactment, she is playing a version of her based on Fielder’s notes and recollections of the conversation, which are colored by his previous experience with her.
Overall, the film becomes less of a documentary and more of an exploration of how, despite the title, you cannot see everything. Unlike many documentaries, the film doesn’t try to portray itself as absolute truth.
In a time when it feels like every truth is subjective, Fielder and Oppenheim instead raise more questions than answers — and create a masterpiece of documentary — by confronting the fact that they themselves are not objective.
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