When the upper echelon of the filmgoing community convenes in the dog days of summer at the Telluride Film Festival, two questions are usually on everyone’s mind: Will the eventual Best Picture winner premiere here? And what is this year’s secret screening?
Telluride likes to keep the lineup under wraps until people start arriving in Colorado, but it’s often easy to determine what will be playing over the long weekend in the mountains. The secret screening, however, usually keeps patrons guessing. This year, everyone was in for a treat because the secret screening ended up being a film no one really even knew existed.
Enter “You Can See Everything.”
Comedian Nathan Fielder and “Primetime” filmmaker Lance Oppenheim codirect the new documentary (of sorts) about Elizabeth Holmes, former CEO and founder of Theranos. When the movie begins, Holmes is just 34 days out from reporting to federal prison for her 11-year sentence for defrauding her company’s investors about the truth surrounding the functionality of blood testing technology. She’s steadfast in her innocence; hopeful that welcoming a small documentary crew into her home will help the world see who she really is and make her case against her charges.
As federal prison looms, Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, with whom she has two kids, are renting a beachside cottage in San Diego. It seems like a peaceful location to spend time together before they are apart for a decade-plus (which begs the question why they would want to have a documentary crew encroaching on their last month as a family).
From the outset, it’s clear “You Can See Everything” is not your standard issue documentary. Though Fielder is co-director, he’s on camera for the entirety of the movie, conducting the discussions with Holmes and Evans. Fielder is also shot and scored like an apparition, waiting around corners with his monitor in hand.
Fielder’s onscreen time with Holmes ends in May 2023, when she reports to federal prison in Bryan, Texas. But what’s brilliant about “You Can See Everything” is that the film doesn’t end there. The near-three hour runtime takes on an entirely new life once Holmes is out of the picture, and it’s important to go into the movie not knowing what happens after her exit. (And it’s hard to dissect the movie in full without talking about the turn it takes, but it’s integral to the experience to go in blind.)
The objective of “You Can See Everything” feels ambiguous. While that might have been frustrating in a lesser movie, it’s what makes Fielder and Oppenheim’s movie such a one-of-a-kind experience. Holmes wants people to know she’s not the caricature she has been portrayed as, while wearing black turtlenecks like a uniform and speaking with a bizarrely manufactured deepened tone. Is that really her only motive? Once known as the youngest self-made female billionaire, Holmes claims money has never been important to her.
The movie never attempts to help you understand Holmes. In fact, it makes the point that trying to understand her is futile. The people closest to her insist she’s just a regular person who did something extraordinary and is now being wrongfully punished. The dizzying experience of “You Can See Everything” is that the audience’s perception of her can change by the second. The person who comes out of the film looking perhaps the worst is Evans, who’s like a stage parent for disgraced ex-CEOs and operates with unchecked swagger and confidence.
Ultimately, Fielder and Oppenheim take a sledgehammer to our notion of what a documentary can be. It almost feels disingenuous to categorize “You Can See Everything” as a documentary when it feels like pure performance art. At first, it’s easy to think someone like Fielder is there to gawk and make an outrageous situation even more heightened with his brand of comedy. But as the movie changes, so does Fielder — and watching that evolution deepens the movie in many ways.
In all his conversations with Holmes, Fielder retains his skepticism around the convicted fraudster without ever demonizing her. She knows people don’t trust her, but she continues to hold tightly to her innocence. When Fielder bluntly asks about her deception and if she is lying to him, Holmes replies, “I don’t have anything to deceive you on. Of course I’m not deceiving you.” For the audience, there will be many times throughout the film where it’s fair to ask if everyone involved in the production is deceiving us. Not knowing the answer to that question is what makes “You Can See Everything” one of the most thrilling, uncomfortable and best films of the year.
Matthew Passantino is a freelance film critic and a member of the Critics Choice Association and the Greater Western New York Film Critics Association.
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