SPOILER ALERT: This review contains specific details about You Can See Everything.
Elizabeth Holmes and her Theranos grift have drawn major media coverage in news and Hollywood projects. She has been depicted as a wide-eyed swindler who convinced people she could run hundreds upon hundreds of medical tests from one drop of blood with her miracle machine in Alex Gibney’s 2019 HBO feature-length documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, as well as the podcast series The Dropout, which would later spawn a 20/20 special. In 2022, Hulu adapted the podcast into a limited series starring Amanda Seyfried as Holmes.
In addition to numerous journalistic profiles and investigative news stories, Adam McKay planned on adapting John Carreyrou’s book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup into a feature narrative film, but that project has been in limbo since Jennifer Lawrence exited the project.
Oddly enough, it makes sense that scholar of shenanigans Nathan Fielder would choose Elizabeth Holmes as his next topic of choice. But based on the documentary, it seems like the subject and the filmmaker chose each other.
Fielder partnered with Lance Oppenheim to co-direct You Can See Everything, a perfect partner in crime to paint a portrait of the Theranos high priestess. Oppenheim, who will be working double duty this awards season with this and Primetime, lives in a similar curious, off-center counterculture world with his feature documentary debut Some Kind of Heaven at Sundance as well as unscripted projects Ren Faire, Spermworld, and The Python Hunt.
In You Can See Everything, Fielder and Oppenheim follow Holmes and her partner/fiancé Billy Evans as she gets ready to serve her prison sentence. What starts as a simple documentary turns into Fielder immersing himself in Holmes and Evans’s life. It no longer becomes a documentary, but a Pokémon evolution of a Nathan Fielder project in cinematic form.
You Can See Everything is everything you would expect from Nathan Fielder projects like Nathan For You, The Rehearsal, and The Curse. It’s a profoundly cringe-worthy anthropological study of the complex bizarreness of the human condition that aligns perfectly with Lance Oppenheim’s highly-stylized, character-driven vérité lens.
The 175-minute runtime may seem excessive when Holmes departs for prison almost halfway into the film. However, Fielder and Oppenheim take a sharp left, putting the glaring spotlight on Evans, who welcomes the attention (which is very evident with a full-frontal shot early in the film). And to add more fun to the equation, Fielder and Oppenheim solicit help from the one and only Amanda Seyfried to be a surrogate Holmes to replay scenes from Fielder’s prison visits to the Theranos founder (with Christopher Abbott assuming the role of Billy Evans).
At first, Seyfried’s involvement seems novel and camp, but as we see her fall deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of Holmes’s life, we see the WTFery in her eyes grow bigger and bigger. Her empathy towards Holmes grows stronger and stronger — the same can be said about her contempt towards Evans.
Billy Evans — the unexpected antagonist of You Can See Everything. If there hasn’t been controversy surrounding their relationship, there will be after this movie as he slowly grows into a controlling monster.
Constantly sniffing like a character in Less Than Zero and prefacing sentences with phrases like, “This may sound crazy, but…” Evans clearly positions himself as the alpha in his relationship with Holmes. He gives dot.com boom tech bro energy, and his domineering presence is established in a scene where he is impatient with how Holmes is beating eggs.
While Holmes is in prison, Evans essentially controls her life without her knowledge. He tweets for her, has AI versions of her, and handles many aspects of her business affairs.
Evans’s controlling behavior extends to Fielder, as he tries to direct the film at various points. Domineering eventually becomes possessive as he begins to gatekeep the film’s access to Holmes while she is in prison.
Yes, You Can See Everything is jaw-dropping, funny, wild, bonkers, and everything that Fielder intends it to be. He does what he does, and does it very well. And he does it on a cinematic level, which I applaud.
The same can be said for Oppenheim. He and Fielder make a great team, taking a cultural figure that has nearly reached its saturation point in media and subverting it to make it fresh, sublime, and absurd.
Unlike other prank and hoax films and TV series (Borat, Punk’d, Jackass, etc.), there’s an awkward earnestness to Fielder’s work. It’s as if he genuinely wants to help people — no matter how crazy or ridiculous the situation is. For instance, he helped a diner get publicity by hiring a Michael Richards look-alike to leave a $10,000 tip. He staged an elaborate plan — and it worked.
Similar to the show Jury Duty, it’s as if Fielder was trying to pave a road for Holmes to be some kind of hero, despite the bad things she did. He wanted to show that there was a good human being in her. He wanted to allow her to explain who she is and why she did what she did. It was an opportunity for redemption before prison.
Instead, we get a scene where Fielder shows Holmes and Evans the classic Abbott and Costello “Who’s on first?” comedy bit. After watching, Fielder asks Holmes if she understood the joke, but it’s clear that she didn’t quite understand. Evans says she understands it in a different way and that she’s “special”.
You Can See Everything isn’t necessarily about “Elizabeth Holmes”. It’s about what people make Elizabeth Holmes out to be because half of the film is told without her on screen.
Holmes believes she created a device that works and will not tell you otherwise. Fielder and Oppenheim do not paint her as a scammer or some sort of charlatan, but a determined, idealistic entrepreneur. Instead, we see Evans lurking in the background, watching her every move and waiting to tell her what to do.
Surprisingly, You Can See Everything makes you sympathize with Holmes. No human being with a heart can’t help but feel some sympathy for Holmes when she leaves her child in tears as she goes to prison. Her eyes may be vacant and soulless when she tells Fielder, “I’m always being real”, but I think that’s just how she is… and sometimes it’s OK to empathize with someone’s delusion. Why she decides to stay in that delusion is another question.
