THE STORY – A few days before she has to turn herself in to serve 11 years in prison, Elizabeth Holmes allows a documentary crew into her home
THE CAST – Nathan Fielder, Elizabeth Holmes & Billy Evans
THE TEAM – Nathan Fielder & Lance Oppenheim (Directors)
THE RUNNING TIME – 174 Minutes
The story of disgraced medical device mogul Elizabeth Holmes is well-known. Her crimes played out publicly in a high-profile trial that ended with Holmes sentenced to an 11-year sentence for defrauding investors in her company, Theranos. The story was fictionalized in the Hulu show “The Dropout,” with Amanda Seyfried as the fallen celebrity. Now, courtesy of boundary-pushing directors Nathan Fielder (“The Rehearsal“) and Lance Oppenheim (“Primetime“), the most recent years of her life get the quasi-documentary treatment in A24’s upcoming “You Can See Everything.” The film takes on so many difficult subject matters—mostly revolving around the meaning of ‘truth’—that it inevitably feels unsatisfying in parts. But, by the time the credits roll after the hefty 172-minute runtime, we are left with a uniquely compelling drama that will linger with haunting questions- the movie’s own inability to arrive at an absolute truth is perhaps its greatest asset.
For those unaware, Elizabeth Holmes was once hailed as a visionary in her time, one of the first women who became a self-made billionaire, backed by the wildly successful company she co-headed with Sunny Balwani, Theranos. But Holmes’ claims to have created a device that could run a significant number of medical tests with a single drop of blood were soon discovered to be fraudulent, and the executives’ fall from grace was as harsh as their ascent. By 2023, her appeals exhausted, Holmes was on the verge of serving a punishing 11-year sentence for defrauding Theranos’ investors.
And, after years of media silence, Holmes and her now-partner Billy Evans agree to let a documentary crew led by Nathan Fielder into her home, just 34 days away from the start of her sentence. The resulting film, “You Can See Everything,” just had its World Premiere at the Telluride Film Festival after a weekend of secrecy. To say that it is thought-provoking, at times uncomfortably funny, and profoundly disturbing may be an understatement. It is not to say the film is perfect, but there can be no denying the unique aesthetic of its creators and the continually absorbing nature of the story it covers.
As Fielder explains it, he is in search of the truth. Holmes has maintained her innocence throughout, but the court of public opinion has resoundingly condemned her. “You Can See Everything’s” premise is suspect at the outset, and the film’s weakest moments are in its first act. Does this story really need to be revisited? Two different criminal juries heard the Theranos fraud case and found both executives guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Appellate courts agreed with the judgments, and even the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene. What else needs to be said about this story? Fielder does not convincingly answer this question, at least not at first, and seems even callously indifferent to the fact that, regardless of Holmes’ guilt or innocence, there are real human victims underlying this tale. At minimum, it is not clear that the horrific toll this story will take on her children is front of mind. His own admitted skepticism about her claims of innocence does not help. If he does not believe her, then his story really is just duplicative and cumulative, the proverbial piling on, if you will.
But Fielder and Oppenheim’s gamble pays out, slowly at first, as the film heads into its second and third acts. I will keep this review free of additional spoilers, but suffice it to say, they do manage to find a deep layer of intertwined stories of human tragedy, greed, deceit, power, and deception. Fielder has unbridled access for most of the movie, and he always knows to ask the right question. His own attempt at creating a challenging movie—challenging for the audiences that will be uncomfortable with many of the episodes he portrays—rebounds on him eventually, and he is very much at the center of the documentary. While the search for truth is portrayed as black and white as “guilty” and “not guilty,” he slowly but surely realizes that these concepts are far more nuanced than our simplistic society ever likes to accept. In doing so, he ultimately does justify this project’s existence—it shows us that, if we care to dig deeper, we may find that not everything is necessarily as it seems or, at least, as it has been presented to us by storytellers and by the subjects of these stories.
Fielder and Oppenheim’s movie also takes an enormous amount of risk, as do many of those who agree to portray themselves in the picture. Arguably, even A24, the studio behind this project, has taken on a tremendous gamble. The consequences of all of this will not be fully known until the movie is ultimately released later this year. But the fact that they and others have put themselves squarely at the center of heated political debates about a long series of controversial subjects—including, most critically, the treatment of women by our justice system, our media, and the public—speaks volumes to their courage and commitment. In this day and age, that at a minimum is to be admired.
“You Can See Everything,” as the title may suggest, is unabashed in showing you everything the directors captured, so ethical questions abound and fly almost from the very first scene. These, too, are some of the risks the filmmakers take on. And while it is not clear to me that Fielder understood at first the complexities of the central question at the heart of his movie—again, whether our society and the systems that operate in it can ever be truly fair and impartial to a woman entrepreneur—he very obviously does at the end, even if he does not say it in as many words. He is left disturbed, with at least a small sense of despair, as if his mind-bending experience has thrown him deeper into a hole of darkness when he was searching for truth and light. The audience will assuredly feel the same as well, again amply justifying this project’s existence in droves.
Ultimately, “You Can See Everything” is a troubling and undeniably gripping work. It succeeds not simply because it uncovers new things about Elizabeth Holmes (without ever arriving at some definitive new truth) but, more importantly, because it understands how elusive such truth can be. Fielder and Oppenheim occasionally stumble under the weight of their own ambitions, and the film’s blind spots—especially around the real victims and the consequences for Holmes’ family—keep it from being something I can entirely cheer or celebrate. But its willingness to sit with contradiction, to interrogate the stories we tell about guilt, power, gender, punishment, and public spectacle, gives the movie a force that is difficult to shake. Its style, too, is undeniable and engrossing. It may frustrate as often as it fascinates, or make you gasp in incredulity as often as it makes you laugh. But by the end, its refusal to provide easy answers feels less like a flaw than the point: in showing us everything, it only makes clearer how little we may ever truly know.
