Secrets, lies and a shock A-list cameo: how You Can See Everything became the film of the year

Nathan Fielder’s secretive Elizabeth Holmes documentary has become a sold-out smash hit and might make Oscars history Spoilers ahead If there is one moment that sums up You Can See Everything , the new A24 documentary on Elizabeth Holmes that until this weekend was shrouded in sp

Nathan Fielder’s secretive Elizabeth Holmes documentary has become a sold-out smash hit and might make Oscars history Spoilers ahead If there is one moment that sums up You Can See Everything , the new A24 documentary on Elizabeth Holmes that until this weekend was shrouded in spoiler-averse secrecy, it is, perhaps surprisingly, the one everyone already knows: co-director Nathan Fielder, the droll comedian known for deadpanning subjects into submission, sitting eye to eye with Holmes, the unblinking fabulist of Theranos infamy. In tight zoom, saturation turned up – Fielder’s arched brows and Holmes’s oceanic blue eyes as stark as two magnetic poles – he asks her: “Are you being real right now?” That question hangs over much of the colossal three-hour movie, particularly a claustrophobic first half that has made headlines since the film’s existence was announced in September. That first half – essentially, the only part of the movie anyone respecting spoiler guidelines and/or the theatrical experience could talk about – takes place entirely in 2023, when Fielder and his co-director Lance Oppenheim, along with a small crew, embedded with Holmes, her husband, Billy Evans, and their two small children in the run-up to her prison sentence for fraud.

We watch as Fielder, over a few surreal weeks in a beachfront rental, attempts to puncture Holmes’s indomitable facade of faultlessness. It’s not exactly comedic, this chess game between three norms-ignoring people, but it can be quite funny: TV’s grand illusionist, an absurdist auteur who will go as far as actually obtaining a 737 pilot’s license for the bit, stymied by a world-class fabricator, with her poorly dissembling husband on the side. This section resembles, in feel, the pull of internet wormhole: the closer you zoom in on a subject, without outside context, the more sense devolves.

Was Holmes “being real”, for instance, when she told Fielder, with seemingly complete sincerity, that she has never told a lie in her life ? Or when she continued to insist, despite plain reality, that Theranos devices could perform 1,000 diagnostic tests? Continue reading...