Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes duel in this masterful documentary
Once hailed as a visionary entrepreneur and frequently compared to Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Holmes built her company Theranos on the promise of a revolutionary blood-testing device capable of delivering a vast array of medical diagnostics from a single drop of blood. That promise ultimately collapsed under scrutiny, leading to the company’s downfall, criminal fraud convictions, and a public fascination that extended far beyond Silicon Valley and into popular culture, even rendered in the Hulu series The Dropout, with Amanda Seyfried playing Holmes, and picking up an Emmy and Golden Globe in the process. You Can See Everything arrives at a particularly intriguing moment in that saga back in 2023, following Holmes in the final weeks before she begins serving her prison sentence. Alongside her husband Billy Evans and their children, she opens her life to documentary filmmakers in an effort to tell her version of events and perhaps reshape the narrative that has come to define her.
What immediately distinguishes the film is its choice of creative partners. Directors Lance Oppenheim (Primetime, Ren Faire, Some Kind of Heaven) and Nathan Fielder are hardly conventional documentarians, and Fielder’s presence as interviewer becomes one of the documentary’s greatest strengths. Known for his awkward humor, manipulation of social situations, and fascination with human behavior (see Nathan for You and The Rehearsal), Fielder is uniquely positioned to engage with Holmes, a figure who has spent years blurring the boundaries between fact, belief, performance, and persuasion. What begins as a documentary about Holmes and her impending imprisonment gradually evolves into something stranger and more compelling: an extended examination of truth, self-deception, and the stories people tell themselves to survive.
The film is engrossing from the start. Conversations frequently devolve into discussions of semantics and definitions, particularly around the concept of lying. Holmes remains steadfast in her insistence that she has never deliberately lied, and Fielder’s attempts to unpack that claim produce some of the documentary’s most fascinating moments. A standout scene sees Fielder show her Abbott and Costello’s famous “Who’s on First?” routine, with language twisting back on itself until clarity seems impossible, he ekes out insights into her own perceptions of her language and statements. Rather than providing clarity, these exchanges deepen the mystery surrounding Holmes. Is she engaged in another sophisticated act of self-preservation, or are we witnessing an individual with a genuinely different way of understanding reality?
What emerges over time is that this is not simply a confrontation between two unusual personalities, but three. Evans becomes an increasingly significant presence, perhaps overshadowing Holmes herself. Initially presented as a supportive husband, Evans gradually reveals a desire to influence and control the narrative surrounding his wife. The film quietly raises uncomfortable questions about his motivations. Is his devotion genuine, or is Holmes herself a vehicle for his own entrepreneurial ambitions and self-image? As the story progresses, Evans evolves into the documentary’s most chilling figure, his efforts to shape Holmes’s public identity taking on increasingly disturbing dimensions.
One of the documentary’s most impressive achievements is its willingness to expose its own construction. Oppenheim and Fielder pull back the curtain on documentary filmmaking itself, revealing deliberations, disagreements, ethical concerns, and the constant tension between filmmakers and subjects. There is a persistent skepticism running throughout the project. Like the audience, the filmmakers seem aware that they may be witnessing a carefully orchestrated campaign to rehabilitate Holmes’s image and position her for a future return to the public sphere. The camera often lingers uncomfortably, exploiting silences and framing moments in ways that make viewers acutely aware of the power inherent in documentary storytelling.
Yet the film is never simply an exposé. Fielder’s own role becomes increasingly complex. His trademark mannerisms, awkward observations, and relentless curiosity provide many of the documentary’s funniest moments, but they also fuel its deeper psychological inquiry. His tendency to peer through windows, lurk around corners, and obsessively probe details becomes both comic relief and a visual manifestation of the scrutiny being applied to Holmes. Over time, however, something unexpected occurs, the master manipulator appears genuinely confounded. Fielder becomes increasingly invested in his subject, and hints of affection begin to complicate his objectivity. Whether he is discovering hidden truths or falling victim to Holmes’s charisma becomes one of the documentary’s central questions.
The second half takes a remarkable meta-twist. It represents the point at which the film transcends its true-crime foundations and becomes something altogether stranger. A new figure enters the story, functioning as both audience surrogate and catalyst, peeling back additional layers of the narrative while highlighting just how bizarre the entire situation has become. The result is both hilarious and deeply unsettling.
At 174 minutes, You Can See Everything is a substantial commitment, yet the runtime flies by. The film continuously reinvents itself, shifting from character study to media critique, from psychological examination to documentary about documentary-making. It is often funny, frequently insightful, and consistently engrossing.
Rather than delivering a definitive verdict on Elizabeth Holmes, the documentary leaves viewers trapped in the same uncertainty that confronts Nathan Fielder. We are never quite sure whether we are witnessing honesty, performance, delusion, manipulation, or some impossible combination of all four. That lingering ambiguity becomes the film’s greatest achievement. You Can See Everything is crazy, hypnotic, unsettling, and utterly riveting. It offers more questions than answers, but in doing so creates one of the most fascinating portraits of truth, perception, and self-mythologizing imaginable.
You Can See Everything releases on October 16th
