There is a moment in the latter half of “You Can See Everything” where somebody – much like the audience, at that point in the film – is struggling to put into words how they feel about Elizabeth Holmes.
Notorious (genius?) filmmaker and comedian Nathan Fielder has just shown this person the first half of “You Can See Everything,” a documentary he co-directed with Lance Oppenheim. This section of the documentary takes place primarily in the San Diego home that Holmes lived in with her partner, hotel heir Billy Evans, just before she started an 11-year prison sentence for defrauding investors in her now defunct health technology company Theranos.
It’s not that this particular person has reservations about whether or not Holmes did, in fact, lie about the accuracy of Theranos’ blood testing technology. That much is clear. It’s rather that they don’t have a grasp on how to feel about the particular version of Holmes that the documentary presents.
Holmes’ stated goal with the film is to convince the world of her innocence – to show everyone the “real” Liz Holmes. Over the course of an hour or so, we watch her obfuscate, and watch her fail to understand (pretend not to understand?) how people could misunderstand her. We watch her insist she has never lied, even when confronted with concrete evidence of those lies. We watch her stare unblinkingly at Fielder while he stares back, unsure if he can trust a single thing that comes out of her mouth.
But, we also see her in moments that feel painfully human. We watch her watch scenes from “The Dropout,” a Hulu show that presents a version of the rise and fall of Theranos, welling up and turning away from the screen when it becomes too much. We watch her as a mother to two young children. And we watch her with her partner, Billy, who seems more insidious by the second.
What this person is struggling with – and I would be remiss to reveal who they are, just as I would be remiss to talk in great detail about anything that happens “You Can See Everything” before you have a chance to see it in all its riveting glory – is the discomfort that anyone feels when confronted with conflicting narratives – when it becomes clear that they’re missing the full picture. And Holmes is nothing if not conflicting, exhibiting the type of behavior that’s ripe for someone like Fielder to unpack. “You Can See Everything” expands the idea of what a documentary can be by calling attention to the blurry lines between artifice and reality, making us constantly question if what we’re seeing is real – not just from Holmes, but from the documentarians as well.
For as much as “You Can See Everything” is a documentary, it’s also about the dueling performances (and they are performances) from Fielder and Holmes. Fielder himself is a character in the film – as he is in all of his reality projects, from “Nathan For You” to “The Rehearsal,” never playing himself but rather some variation. In a lot of ways, he’s the perfect person to take on Holmes – a prankster whose breakout show centered on scamming small businesses taking on the most famous scammer of all time. Here, he’s playing investigator, a more awkward version of the hero of a paranoid ‘70s thriller, determined not to fall for whatever strange charm Holmes possesses.
The filmmakers are remarkably attuned to how they play a role in perpetuating that charm, putting forth versions of Holmes that feel alternately alien and then completely recognizable, making you laugh at her folly and then feel sorry for her in the same breath – emotional whiplash ensues. The film also pulls Fielder’s own biases to the forefront, making the viewer acutely aware of how documentary as an art form can manipulate.
In the latter half of the film when Holmes is in prison and Fielder can’t speak to her on camera, the filmmakers use actors to reenact conversations between them onscreen, paying particular attention to how the sausage is made. The scripts for these reenactments come straight from Fielder’s notes and memory. Sometimes, he’ll correct an actor’s line reading, pointedly reminding the audience that we’re not watching Elizabeth Holmes, but rather an interpretation of her. During one scene, someone asks him if his apparent empathy (at least, the character’s apparent empathy) for Holmes is causing him to cut out things that might make her look bad. He says no, but it’s impossible to know if he’s telling the truth.
“You Can See Everything” is very conscious of the ways that media – television, news, even this very documentary – can shape our opinions about someone. But it is also interested in the intricacies of human behavior, and particularly the question of what it looks like when someone is lying.
Billy is a central part of this question. Fielder’s interactions with Holmes are fascinating in the sense that there seems to be a modicum of respect there (scammer game recognizes game, I guess), but Fielder’s contempt for Billy leads to many of the film’s most humorous moments. Billy is the bluntest object in the film – if he’s hiding something, he’s remarkably bad at hiding the fact that he’s hiding something. He cuts off lines of questioning he doesn’t like, even when those questions aren’t directed at him (including an emotional moment between Fielder and Holmes’ father, and another where Billy forces the film crew to cut the cameras). The way he speaks to and treats Elizabeth is particularly frustrating, growing from a small moment where he takes a bowl of eggs away from her because he doesn’t like how she is whisking them to far more upsetting revelations about what the logistics of their relationship look like while she’s in prison. If there’s one thing I’m sure of coming out of this film, it’s that Billy Evans sucks.
That being said, when watching “You Can See Everything,” it’s impossible to forget that that title is a misnomer – there is no way to know what to trust, no way to get a clear picture of the relationship between these two people. There is a moment where Fielder shows Holmes the famous “Who’s on First” comedy routine from Abbott and Costello, comparing it to her propensity for using purposefully confusing turns of phrase. But she doesn’t understand why the routine is funny, and when Fielder has to explain it to her, she seems genuinely distressed that she’s not able to understand this very simple human interaction. It’s one of the things in the film that made me feel sad, watching her become acutely aware of the things about her that separate her from everyone else.
But is it sad? Am I being taken in? Is Billy taking advantage of Holmes at a vulnerable time in her life, or did she attach herself to the only person who the world might hate more than they hate her? It is impossible to say, especially when feelings get in the way. Holmes invited us into her home to prove she didn’t lie. But from that point on, our feelings about her don’t have much to do with that at all. It’s not about who’s in the wrong or the right. It’s about who’s giving the best performance.
