YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING

You Can See Everything delivers on the title’s promise and provides a chilling look at Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans featuring Nathan Fielder’s signature style of comedy and storytelling that delivers countless moments of uncontrollable laughter, cringe and true horror, but it's the exploration of narration and its effect on the truth that we gain from the story that makes this a revolutionary and daring piece of documentarian filmmaking that you won’t ever forget!

If you’ve seen any of Nathan Fielder’s past projects, you have an idea of his style: cringe inducing, playing on long uncomfortable silences, and tricking his subjects into thinking they are in a completely different situation than what he truly has in store for them. Even with that in mind, you may think you know what is going to unfold in You Can See Everything, but not even Fielder and his co-director Lance Oppenheim could have dreamed of in their wildest nightmares what they were about to capture on camera.

The world knows the name Elizabeth Holmes and her near billion dollar fraud at Theranos, having been the subject of Hulu miniseries starring Amanda Seyfried, a HBO documentary, and countless articles. In an attempt to humanize Holmes and show her as a human being and not an internet joke, Holmes and her husband Billy Evans invited Fielder and Oppenheim into their home in the month leading up to Holmes’ incarceration, providing unrestricted 24/7 access to their lives. Why would they choose Fielder of all people to make this documentary? It’s a question that you are asking before you even start watching the film, and once the film ends you’ll be wondering how Holmes and Evans were this stupid to select him based on not only how he frames their characters on camera, but the pure lunacy of raw footage he and Oppenheim capture.

What actually happens in the documentary cannot be spoiled, as watching it is an experience you can’t actually believe. It’s incredibly hilarious at times thanks to Fielder’s absurdist, cringe and dead pan style of humour that creates so many bizarre moments while he interacts with Holmes and Evans, as well as full candid moments of Holmes and Evans you can’t believe you are watching. The entire film has an undeniable sense of psychological horror as you are constantly going “oh my gosh how is this happening” as Fielder continues to push the boundaries of what can be accomplished in a documentary. But as the film comes to a close, it should come as no surprise that no one walks away from this documentary looking innocent, though surprisingly Fielder himself included, with the audience having more questions than answers then when they walked into the film. Except for Evans; there is no flavouring of the footage in his regard, he just comes across like a tyrannical, idiotic narcissist based on his own actions, words and self indulgence. He made Fielder’s job incredibly easy and provided the film its own goldmine of self mockery.

Holmes maintains her innocence, saying that her story was told in the media by others and with words not her own, and that is how Oppenheim and Fielder frame the documentary. They are telling Holmes story based on the footage they choose to display to the audience from the thousands of hours of raw footage they have, purposefully making editing decisions to hold some shots for long uncomfortable periods of times to elicit specific responses from viewers and using Ari Balouzian’s unnerving musical score, setting an unmistakable terrifying tone for the entire film. But at the same time, as the film enters its second half with Holmes in prison and unable to appear on camera, Fielder recreates moments of his interactions with Holmes with an actress (which this actress whose identity shall remain unnamed is without question the film’s secret weapon and is incredible in the way she reacts to the chaotic situations she finds herself now apart of), and uses his memory to transcribe his conversations with Holmes. While doing so, both the actress and Oppenheim pick up that Fielder himself may be compromised from spending days on end with Holmes as the words he chooses paints her in a very specific light despite everything Fielder has previously shown the audience.

It's from this idea that the documentary’s central thesis becomes clear and begs the question can we really trust what we are being shown. For almost three hours, you watch Fielder and Holmes enter a psychological battle of the minds as these two master manipulators each enact their own agenda as the cameras roll. While Fielder may believe that he has the upper hand as he is calling the shots from behind the camera and directs the path forward after Holmes enters prison, it becomes evidently more apparent that he himself may be compromised as a narrator by Holmes’ manipulation which leaves the audience with a chilling thought as the documentary concludes: can they trust anything they just saw on screen? Captured in real-time by Oppenheim as he shapes the documentary’s thematic direction as Fielder chases Holmes and Evans, what audiences are left with is not only a masterpiece in the deconstruction of storytelling that calls out our susceptibility as an audience, but a chilling and timely work of art that is destined to be remembered as one of the most important documentaries of the decade.

Absolutely maddening and wildly entertaining in the most uncomfortable and twisted way imaginable, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim bring you in close and will melt your mind with their portrait of failed Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes. Blending the lines between documentarian filmmaking and narrative storytelling, posing a timely and important question about accepting supposed truths from narrators you should be able to trust, while delivering one of the wildest, cringiest, shocking and hilarious documentaries you will ever witness, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim have created a true masterpiece with You Can See Everything while documenting the lives of Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans that the world will never forget.