I’ve always loved cinema and been in absolute awe of what some filmmakers are able to achieve through simply telling stories in which they wholeheartedly believe, and which they intend to resonate with as many viewers as possible – after all, what is this medium if it isn’t entirely and unimpeachably communal at its very core? However, in over a decade of writing about film and its most creative participants, I have never witnessed something quite like You Can See Everything – and this isn’t just hollow praise designed to lean into the hyperbole associated with something that is evidently shaping up to be a cultural phenomenon, but rather an objective statement on what Nathan Fielder (making his feature directorial debut) and Lance Oppenheim have created. The film is an in-depth portrait of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced former CEO of Theranos, an ambitious Silicon Valley start-up in which she claimed to have pioneered technology that could conduct dozens of tests using only a single drop of blood, a proposal that was so ambitious that it ultimately proved to be impossible, but which didn’t stop Holmes and her cohorts from manipulating anyone who showed interest, becoming incredibly wealthy in the process, but then eventually losing everything once their deception was revealed, which caused her to go from one of the most admired, respected young entrepreneurs working to revolutionise the modern healthcare industry, to someone whose very name has come to be shorthand for deceit, dishonesty and a completely reckless disregard for others. Oddly enough, this film was actually the result of Holmes and her husband Billy Evans (a very wealthy individual in his own right, as this film showcases in vivid detail) commissioning a documentary about the final month before she would report to prison to start her eleven-year sentence, in the hopes of demystifying her story through “radical transparency”, allowing the world to see that there is more to this woman than we just saw projected onto our television screens in the form of The Dropout, or contained within the book Bad Blood, in which journalist John Carreyrou first exposed Theranos and its controversial practices. Needless to say, the results speak for themselves, especially when we consider that this is a documentary that emerges through the collaboration between two exceptionally gifted filmmakers whose approaches are so wildly different that they create an absolutely magnetic, unforgettable glimpse into the mind of a truly complicated individual, becoming one of the year’s most extraordinary artistic achievements in ways that would shock and surprise even the most attentive of viewers, becoming more bewildered by a film that seemingly intends to dismantle everything that we believe to be true.

Getting a handle on a film like You Can See Everything is quite a difficult task, and much like everything Fielder has done over his career, it manages to be both something that inspires so much deep conversation, but where the biggest challenge is quite literally starting the discussion. Perhaps the best place to start is at the end (or perhaps it’s the middle, or even the beginning, since this is the exact kind of ambiguity that anchors this film and makes it so deeply unsettling) – we may be able to see everything, but whether or not we truly understand what we are looking at is a different matter entirely. There is clearly a distinction between seeing something objectively and interpreting it subjectively, which is where Fielder and Oppenheim settle in the process of being invited into the home of Holmes and Evans, where they are subjected to unusually friendly conditions, given unfettered access into the daily routine of this couple, where seemingly nothing is out-of-bounds, any question can reasonably be asked, and the directors have free reign to make any observations they wish – after all, any publicity is good publicity, which the image-oriented Evans seems more than eager to establish throughout this film, which perhaps wasn’t intended to be this much of a revealing portrait of these people, but organically flourishes into it in the process of putting it all together. Ultimately, this film suggests that the more information we accumulate, the less certain we can be about what it is exactly we are looking at, with appearance evidently not matching reality, which opens the door for several thornier conversations in which the actual inner depths of these characters are revealed, albeit to an unknown extent. There is something inherently disarming about this premise, since we are encouraged to believe that everything we are seeing is as truthful and honest as it can be, but yet every bit of new information only generates further questions – at no point does You Can See Everything actually offer answers to the many conundrums it poses, but not for lack of trying: much like Fielder and Oppenheim, we genuinely believe that we are getting closer to the truth, but in reality are only becoming increasingly more entangled in a web of deceit, causing us to question whether what we are seeing is actually real, or are merely fabrications – it is clear that this is the case, but not who it is exactly that is pulling these strings, whether it’s the filmmakers or their subjects, whose attempts to wrangle with this mystery through collecting as much information as possible doesn’t necessarily bring us any closer to a solution.

There are many aspects of You Can See Everything that underline the fact that it is about as unorthodox a documentary as it could be, to the point where any attempt to even vaguely categorise it feels like a fool’s errand, since the moment we believe we’ve settled on some aspect of the story, Fielder and Oppenheim pull the rug out from under us, sending us into yet another intentional spiral of confusion, which likely matches their own bewilderment at having been involved with this story. Perhaps the most glaring evidence that this is not going to be a traditional work of non-fiction comes in how the concept of performance is so central to this film, which is not something that we typically expect with a documentary. Both Fielder and Oppenheim are artists fascinated by the idea of performance in one way or another – their work is quite different in structure and subject matter (and the extent to which they get involved with their subjects varies immensely, so it’s not a surprise that Oppenheim is a bit more of a spectral presence on-screen, whereas Fielder is front-and-centre, which we’ll discuss shortly since this brings up its own fascinating conversation about the role of a director in shaping a particular narrative), but they share the same appreciation for peculiar personalities, using the medium as a means to dissect the minds of people that they find fascinating. This also makes it very clear why they were drawn to the idea of taking up Holmes and Evans on their offer of having a documentary made about their lives – it wasn’t pitched to them directly (the exact circumstances are not completely clear, but it appears as if the subjects provided their willingness to be filmed to the studio rather than to a specific set of filmmakers, with Fielder and Oppenheim gravitating towards the idea once they became aware of it), but the prospect of exploring the final days before Holmes surrendered herself to begin a prison sentence that was intended to keep her behind bars for more than a decade is undeniably fascinating to them. They’re essentially handed the opportunity to create a portrait of a truly controversial figure, someone who is almost universally reviled for her misdeeds, with the directors being given carte blanche and a seemingly unlimited set of resources to make the film that they feel best represents their intentions as artists (rather than respecting the already very loosely-defined boundaries set down by Holmes and Evans, who don’t seem to be all that concerned with providing access to people who are not only strangers, but have a history of being willing to present unflattering depictions of their subjects), and it’s an opportunity that they were evidently unable to turn down, as we see throughout this film.

Ultimately, Holmes is someone whose entire reputation is built from a very clear act of putting on an act – the central tension of the film is surprisingly not the crimes she is accused of committing, nor the efforts to rehabilitate her image (even if this was the intention of the subjects when agreeing to participate in the project), but rather Holmes’ annoyance at having been quoted as saying that she created a character, the veracity of which is neither confirmed nor denied (although anyone can see that there is always something going on beneath the surface) – and what is most interesting is not whether or not she is playing a character, but rather getting the attribution right: Holmes insists that the person everyone believes she is (delivered through various shows, books, articles and documentaries) is nothing more than a loosely-formed fabrication, an approximation of what she did, rather than who she is at her core. This is something that both the subjects and the directors oddly agree on, since they’re all united in the intention to peel back the layers on this enigmatic woman, in an attempt to understand who she is beyond the public persona. The main deviation is the respective endgames for both parties – for Holmes and Evans, its an act of redeeming her image as far as possible, whereas for Fielder and Oppenheim, it’s a case of unravelling someone whose entire existence has been a series of strange moments, which they hope to clarify, but find becomes an nearly impossible process, since once you are immersed in the life of someone who has spent so much of her professional career in a state of performance, it’s understandable to not know how to navigate their personal life, especially when given seemingly unrestricted access. Holmes and Evans are constantly stating that they are always being authentic, even when it is quite clear that this could not be further from the truth – they’ve both created these characters, albeit unintentionally, and in inviting the directors to take a look into their lives, they become characters themselves, which is entirely counterintuitive to the original aims of the film, and certainly an unorthodox approach to making a documentary – but when the entire premise is built on capturing these people and then carving the footage into something meaningful afterwards, it is entirely understandable that a more unconventional style of storytelling would come into the fray. It all eventually coalesces into an unexpectedly complex film in which we are never sure who is the true villain of the piece – it’s certainly not the directors (although the conversation around their role in essentially giving Holmes a platform does lead to some interesting observations), but rather the very narrow boundary of morality that divides Holmes and Evans becomes increasingly more abstract the more we get to know these people.

Moving beyond the subject matter and focusing on the film as a piece of artistic expression, it becomes clear that Fielder and Oppenheim are fervently testing the boundaries of the documentary form in ways that are incredibly original and somewhat unsettling. It is a genre that does offer more flexibility than others, but there are a few key components that are almost universally understood to be sacrosanct, which most who work within the genre adhere to as far as possible. Somehow, You Can See Everything redefines these rules in such a way that they’re not necessarily shattered, but rather entirely challenged to the point where it actually becomes as fascinating to observe the film’s existence as a documentary as much as it is to witness the subject matter grappling with some truly difficult questions – even something as seemingly simple as being asked “why did you do that?” can be unexpectedly disarming and far more revealing than a more carefully-constructed attempt to get the same answer. The camera is a powerful tool, but we often tend to view it as merely a means to visually capture the world that surrounds us, with very few examples of a filmmaker acknowledging it has more complicated uses when handed to someone who understands the limitless possibilities that come with the process of documenting a particular subject. It’s a rare occurrence to find a film that in itself acknowledges the act of being documented – throughout this story, multiple characters remark on the purpose of the film to be an opportunity for Holmes to reveal the most genuine version of herself, making the story as much as about Holmes as it is about the art of filmmaking itself – it’s a confusing and contradictory idea that is almost impossible to accurately describe in coherent terms, primarily because it’s such a new and revolutionary way of making such a film. It all comes down to the idea that You Can See Everything is, more than anything else, a film about looking. Fielder starts the film as an observer, someone who silently stands in the background, just watching these people as they go about their daily routine, but as he immerses himself deeper into their world, his camera begins to change to match the behaviour of the character who is in focus (and I use the word “character” here purposefully, since it becomes obvious that we never truly know who is being authentic and who is delivering a performance, even briefly), his observations compelling him to become a part of the reality that he is attempting to capture, first accidentally and then entirely purposefully once he realises that he can shape the conversations far more easily from within – after all, an observational experiment can never be entirely objective since the act of observation changes the conditions of the experiment in subtle but meaningful ways. The moment Fielder transitions from an outside spectator to an active participant is a revelatory moment, and underlines how You Can See Everything starts as an attempt to document reality, but eventually becomes an intervention in reality, or at least the closest estimate.  

There is a very important question that ultimately governs You Can See Everything – at what point does documenting reality become the act of recreating it? To understand this, we need to veer off into a discussion on metafiction, since as much as we could restrict the discussion of this film to it being a primarily self-referential portrait of a subject and its observer, there are additional layers that cannot just be left unexamined. I’m drawn to the work of Patricia Waugh, whose book Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction is an essential text on the subject and helps us unlock so much of what makes this film so incredibly compelling – in particular, she asserts that metafiction as a whole is an act of self-conscious expression that draws attention to its status as an artefact, where the fact that such a film exists is as important as the subject being explored. Metafiction is an integral tool to help us understand all the various disparate strands that guide this film, since just about every idea we encounter can be filtered through this lens. The most obvious is the paradox of performing a particular identity, whether intentionally or inadvertently. There is often debate around whether identity is something that we construct or discover, with the general opinion being that it is a blend of both – and in the case of Holmes, there is an argument to be made that most of what we see is who she is at her core, but the process of trying to rehabilitate her image leads her to over-extend, turning into the uncanny approximation of what an ordinary person should be in her perspective – and considering so much of her reputation (even prior to her downfall) was built around the fact that she constructed a particular version of herself for the outside world, only for her to do exactly the same in this film, leads to some fascinating observations, particularly around the truthfulness of what is evidently a performance, the truthfulness of which is always called into question. Fielder grapples with these thorny questions through doing what he does best: falling back into the art of recreation. His previous work has seen the director attempt to make sense of the surrounding world through replicating a version of reality in which he has more control, and this follows through into You Can See Everything, but rather than being the fodder for trivial flights of fancy, it is done for the sake of necessity, helping the directors clarify certain ambiguities that cannot be revealed in reality, for a number of reasons. However, does the act of recreating something not inevitably change it, even slightly, since the attempt to reproduce reality can only serve to expose the artifice of the original situation, giving them additional clarity but also complicating the process even more than they expected? Eventually it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish between the original experiences and the reconstructions, and had there not been clear markers that indicate it in one way or another (primarily through the participation of Amanda Seyfried, who enters the film to reprise her role as Holmes), we’d certainly be wondering where reality ends and fiction begins, the boundaries becoming increasingly porous and untenable, and somehow even more truthful.

You Can See Everything is undeniably a masterpiece in both form and function – but we also must acknowledge that this is not an easy film, at least in terms of the deeper implications. I’ve often admired Fielder for being someone who doesn’t pay too much credence to how he is perceived, and this is significant because he is an artist who evidently does not have anything to hide, so he can afford to be a bit more of an intentionally complicated figure, which has often led dissidents to consider his particular style of storytelling as thinly veiled manipulation, which fits in perfectly with the overall intentions of this film and what it is ultimately aiming to achieve. Anyone who steps away from this film believing that Fielder and Oppenheim were the antagonists of this story may not be able to comprehend the many nuances of the film, but there is a discomfort in realising that this is a project that started as a transparent attempt to reorient the public on Holmes, presenting her as a complex figure and (perhaps most shockingly) a victim of a system that preys on the vulnerable and impressionable. The irony is so poetic that not even someone with the demented genius of Fielder could’ve conceived of it, but he certainly relishes in the opportunity to represent it on screen, capturing one of the most immoral attempts to rehabilitate someone so insistent on being viewed as a sacrificial lamb that she and those around her actively work to manipulate reality, with the directors capable of doing nothing other than just watching it happen before them, mouths agape and minds feverishly working to figure out precisely how to bring all of this to life throughout the film without succumbing to the same temptation to rework reality to meet a particular agenda. We’ve already remarked that You Can See Everything can be considered something of an experiment, and we have to wonder if there are any limits on how far something can be pushed in the name of an experiment, to the point where the very fabric of reality is called into question, where the subject, the observer and all other participants (including the audience, as we accompany Fielder on this very strange voyage, eventually becoming complicit ourselves – we both condemn the very clear manipulation, while also gleefully relishing in witnessing the spectacle) all being responsible in how the truth is perceived and delivered. It ultimately becomes less of a case of determining whether Holmes is innocent or guilty (ironically, the entire purpose of the film, from their perspective, was to be an opportunity for her to set the record straight on what she considers to be her undeniable innocence, which anyone who possesses any logical thought will know couldn’t be further from the truth), but rather exploring the fickle boundaries between guilt and innocence, which are not as clear-cut as they would initially seem.

Then there is Fielder himself – Oppenheim is an essential creative force, but its undeniable that it is Fielder who is guiding the narrative. The production notes of You Can See Everything clearly indicate that this was never intended to be centred around him, with the purpose of the film originally being that Fielder would join Oppenheim behind the camera, rather than factoring into the narrative himself. However, when the conversations he had with the subjects become more intriguing than anything else being recorded, it makes sense that the film would gradually change shape, placing him at the centre of the narrative in a way that we haven’t even seen with filmmakers like Werner Herzog and Agnès Varda, who also made documentaries in which they became the subjects to a large degree, since it seems almost contradictory for someone who intends to capture reality to become a part of that same process as a subject. Fielder is aware of the burden that comes with being both the director and one of the subjects, and the idea that he can shape the narrative to fit his own personal interests is not lost on him. However, he’s a much more responsible filmmaker than we may initially assume, and it all becomes a matter of simply trusting him to deliver a film that is ethically as sound as it can be, at least from his perspective as one of the two primary curators of this story. What drew me to You Can See Everything was the central irony – Fielder has spent his career creating elaborate scenarios in which others become characters, carefully controlled by him in an effort to develop a deeper understanding of the world that surrounds him. However, what happens when he takes a similar (not identical) approach, but where the power he thought he wielded as the director is swiftly taken away from him? This film is a natural progression of his three prior major projects, which create a peculiar chronology in which his awkward, inscrutable public persona is used in increasingly strange and revealing ways – in Nathan For You, his attempts to serve the community, but where his well-intended efforts to help them fall apart because of his own inability to understand how the world actually works. The Rehearsal (his magnum opus until this point) is dedicated to the aforementioned art of recreation, which he uses as a means to understand the world and the people within it. Finally, The Curse is perhaps the most consequential, since it shows his attempts to explore the psychology of complex characters who are unable to recognise their own shortcomings. Each of these projects is built around Fielder’s desire to understand and control his narrative and those around him, but through encountering Holmes, he realises just how powerless he actually is, and his search for answers to impossible questions only further complicates matters, his initial experiment falling apart at the seams, but in the process reveals some fascinating nuances that reveal as much about the person conducting the experiment as it does the people being studied, his pursuit of an increasingly more elusive truth making You Can See Everything an exercise in self-examination and reflection.

Everything ultimately comes down to one central question: what is reality? Is it something that we construct by ascribing meaning to certain parts of life, or is there something deeper that guides us to believe some things are more inherently truthful than others? You Can See Everything is a film that attempts to understand the lives of these people as more than just public figures, but also complex characters in their own right – it’s often been said that the most important quality when creating a villain is to make sure that, regardless of how sinister their motives or insidious their actions, they must not only believe themselves to be the hero of their own story, but be entirely justified in doing whatever acts of villainy that come to define them. It’s definitely not nearly as clear what Fielder and Oppenheim are attempting to communicate beyond testing the boundaries between truth and fabrications, which are what initially start the film (and very likely the primary impetus for most of its ideas), but which very quickly shifts the further the directors find themselves getting immersed in what is both a bewitching and unsettling version of reality, surrounded by people who seem to wholeheartedly believe that they are innocent, with Holmes in particular standing by her conviction that she did nothing wrong, which we naturally assume to just be a lie, until we begin to question it ourselves. It’s very tricky to make a film like You Can See Everything, since it is by design a film engineered to instill a bit of an existential crisis in the viewer, who will very likely start to feel sympathy for Holmes, perhaps not in the sense where we believe that she didn’t commit any crime, but rather that she is a victim – two things can certainly be true at the same time (which is perhaps the overall thesis statement of this film), and it is entirely possible that she is both someone whose efforts to make the world a better place led to some severe mistakes, eventually coagulating into some truly immoral, criminal acts, as well as someone who was manipulated by powerful men whose wealth and influence allowed them to be nothing other than persuasive – and anyone who has spent some time with someone who occupies any position of power will know that there is a radical difference between someone who asserts their power in a formal setting, and those who do it behind closed doors, since it is usually there where the most harrowing acts of manipulation and coercion tend to occur. However, we have to wonder if this line of questioning itself is an attempt on the part of Fielder and Oppenheim to understand these people and show that Holmes had more layers than initially thought, or just another elaborate construction by the subjects, whose own long history of deceit makes it quite clear that we will never actually understand their intentions, even when granted the most intimate level of access into their lives.

As much as we can wax poetic about all the various layers of this film and what it is communicating, it is also helpful to remember that, beyond the controversial subjects who are nestled at the heart of the film, You Can See Everything is still a film co-directed by Fielder, and he is certainly not someone who is suddenly going to abandon the style that he has been carefully curating for over a decade just because he has chosen to briefly move into a different medium, where he is exploring a more serious subject. Comparing this film to his previous work, we can see how it is not only a spiritual successor in terms of subject matter, but also a fascinating continuation of certain elements as far as the more practical side of the filmmaking is concerned, which is where we see a lot of exceptional work being done by the rest of the crew. It’s easy to be misled into believing that it was only Fielder present in the house, since the voyeuristic nature of the narrative renders the crew virtually invisible (except for scenes in which they become part of the narrative, which coincides with the film gradually starting to change shape, developing into something even more unwieldy and wildly exciting. Famously, Fielder and Oppenheim were handed the brief, the resources and the confidence of those in charge, and set free into the wild domestic life of Holmes and her family, and told to see what they could put together – if they could even put together anything at all. The result is a subversive, playful and bitingly funny documentary that challenges the usually clearly-defined boundaries between fact and fiction in a way that is both encouraging and disconcerting, with the directors making their intention to march to the beat of their own drum (which has always been one of the reasons both Fielder and Oppenheim are such fascinating artists) clear from the first moments. Humour in a documentary is a rare commodity, and not one that is always very effectively utilised – it can either be highly inappropriate, or entirely tacky and forceful, and it is far less common to find the kind of satirical edge that punctuates this film. Over the course of You Can See Everything, the directors invite the audience to laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation in which they’ve found themselves – its outrageously funny, but in ways that are not always predictable, and a lot of the humour emerges organically as a result of the fact that this film is essentially a three-hour montage of an unstoppable object meeting an immovable force, in which Fielder and Holmes engage in one of the most tense games of cat-and-mouse ever committed to film, the odd line of questioning, coupled with the camera being placed uncomfortably closed to the subjects (which is something that Oppenheim brought to the film, as it’s a common trait of his work) creating a sense of unease that would be terrifying if it also wasn’t so incredibly entertaining.

You Can See Everything is a film built from asking questions, but not expecting an answer, which is perhaps contradictory to the art of documentary filmmaking at first, but gradually evolves into something far more invigorating. It seems almost ironic that a comedian known for creative acts of deception would be the person selected to explore this very topic, where he himself becomes the victim of someone whose adamant refusal to simply be known has led her to become an enigmatic figure, and his attempts to unearth her secrets only further complicate the experience, since she is presented as someone both magnetic and uncanny, the kind of person who manages to be charm and terrify us, since we simply never know where we stand with her, something that the film explores in vivid detail. You Can See Everything is a film that contains many moving parts, and in addition to the aforementioned metafictional elements, we can consider it to cross over into a number of additional genres, sometimes without even realising it, since the film is as much a character study as it is a psychological thriller, a dark comedy, a whodunnit mystery and even a bit of a horror, since the tension and unsettling atmosphere is nothing if not entirely disquieting, particularly when it becomes a portrait of someone attempting to control an uncontainable narrative. Fielder has certainly met his match with Holmes (and the fact that they seem to have become friends, or at least have developed something of a shared affinity, as potentially controversial as it may be, speaks to the fact that they are kindred spirits in a few ways), and the great twist of this film comes in the fact that his previous work frequently involves constructing situations in which other people are encouraged (or sometimes misled) into revealing themselves, often without fully understanding the extent to which they are participating in a production. Holmes knows that her life is being captured, but certainly not what the directors intend to do with it – mercifully, Fielder and Oppenheim are not interested in exploiting her, but rather capturing the authentic side of a woman whose very reputation is built on its absence. The process involves Fielder willingly giving up his position as the architect of this narrative, embracing the inversion of the power dynamic (where he is suddenly both the observer and the subject), his pursuit of objective truth only resulting in even more complications. It is a labyrinth designed without any way to escape, since each new path opens up a dozen other passageways, each one leading us even further into a state of perpetual confusion. You Can See Everything is an example of a work in which the more we learn about the subject, the less we actually know, and the more nebulous all these details become, until even just attempting to wrap our heads around the depths of this film seems entirely futile. There is so much left unsaid (and for a film that borders on three hours, it is surprisingly spry and fast-paced, never once overstaying its welcome or feeling too long, which is a credit to the directors’ exceptional skill in keeping us engaged), and the omissions often resound louder than anything we explicitly see on screen. This all coalesces in a shocking, provocative and profoundly entertaining film that is unlike anything we have seen before, and are likely to ever see again, a true once-in-a-lifetime experience that reveals that there is still potential for modern cinema to reinvent itself when it feels inclined to give the right voices a platform to express themselves.