Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, “You Can See Everything” is a matryoshka doll-like documentary that explores the final days of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes before she was sent to prison.
For several weeks, Fielder was granted all-access to document Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans, in their home, filming their every move and questioning Holmes as she faced her criminal charges. In January 2022, Holmes was found guilty of defrauding Theranos investors out of millions of dollars. Her business partner, Ramesh Balwani, was convicted separately in July 2022 on all counts, including defrauding patients with the company’s faulty blood-testing device.
With a packed running time of 174 minutes, one that breezes by thanks to Adam Locke-Norton’s thoroughly compelling editing, “You Can See Everything” uncovers far more than its directors intended. It meditates on the challenge of finding truth, and even false truths, in the documentary’s subjects, and asks how we can believe a documentary when the form itself cannot guarantee honesty.
By its last stretch, you could argue the film moves beyond Holmes and becomes more concerned with the merits of the medium. This is a self-reflexive anti-documentary masterwork that tangles itself in deep webs until the creators ask you to look the other way.
A reveal from a prominent figure by the second act pushes this theme even further, and it’s astonishing to witness on the big screen. I implore you to find a cinema with as large an audience as possible: the collective gasp at my screening was one of the best moviegoing moments I’ve had this year.
“You Can See Everything” would easily be improved by a trimmed running time, but that would also rob you of the joy of being engrossed in this story for three hours. There is no documentary like it this year, or even this decade.
“You Can See Everything” premieres on November 12 in New Zealand cinemas.
Featured images from A24.
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