You Can See Everything
James Brown
This review contains no spoilers.
Elizabeth Holmes once promised to change medicine. Now she wants to change the story about herself. In You Can See Everything, the disgraced Theranos founder opens her home to filmmakers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim just 34 days before reporting to prison. Her partner, Billy Evans, stands by her as cameras follow a family facing separation. What begins as a personal portrait grows into a strange, sometimes funny, three-year examination of truth, belief, and the limits of what any camera can capture.
Most people will enter this documentary with an opinion of Holmes. After all, a jury convicted her of defrauding investors. The filmmakers don’t challenge that verdict. Their interest lies elsewhere: Does Holmes believe what she tells them? Is she defending her reputation, rewriting her history, or both? The uncomfortable answer is that we may never know.
That uncertainty could have made for an exhausting two hours and fifty-five minutes. Instead, it becomes the source of the film’s suspense. Editor Adam Locke-Norton knows when to hold on a face, when to break a moment, and when to place one statement beside another. The editing neither acquits Holmes nor pushes her into the role of a stock villain. It lets the audience notice what does not quite add up.
Fielder and Oppenheim make an inspired team. Fielder, best known for Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, has built a career exploring the awkward space between behavior and performance. Oppenheim, who directed Some Kind of Heaven, Spermworld,
“Watching someone closely isn't the same as knowing them. And sometimes the unanswered question makes the better movie.”
–and Ren Faire, excels at finding the odd, sometimes revealing worlds people build around themselves. Their approaches belong together here, where even ordinary exchanges can feel like scenes from a thriller.
Equally important is the humor. Fielder has always known how uncomfortable situations can become funny without losing their seriousness. Here, laughter does not erase the stakes. It makes the people on screen feel less like symbols and more like complicated human beings. That balance prevents the documentary from becoming a lecture, even when its questions grow increasingly disturbing and sometimes deeply personal.
The camera’s access is almost unsettling. Holmes and Evans welcome the crew into their private lives, yet closeness never guarantees clarity. In fact, the more we see, the less certain we become about what is authentic and what is being managed. That is a tricky line for any documentary to walk, and this one walks it confidently.
I admired the filmmakers’ restraint. They had every opportunity to turn the material into another indictment of Holmes, complete with a neat explanation of her motives. Instead, they trust the audience to live with contradiction. That choice doesn’t excuse her actions. It recognizes that a conviction establishes wrongdoing, not a complete understanding of someone’s inner life.
Some viewers will find that frustrating. I found it entertaining. The dramatic tension comes not from waiting for a shocking revelation, but from watching certainty repeatedly slip just beyond reach. If you distrust Holmes at the start, this film probably won’t convert you. If you’re convinced you already understand her, it likely won’t change that, either.
In the end, You Can See Everything succeeds by exposing the limits of its own title. Watching someone closely isn’t the same as knowing them. And sometimes the unanswered question makes the better movie.
Final Thought
An engrossing documentary whose greatest achievement is not revealing the truth about Elizabeth Holmes, but demonstrating how difficult it can be to recognize the truth when someone believes her own story.