Nathan Fielder’s You Can See Everything gazes into the abyss of Elizabeth Holmes

Fans of comedian/performance-artist/job-there-isn’t-a-name-for Nathan Fielder may be somewhat more prepared for what his Elizabeth Holmes documentary, You Can See Everything, has in store.

Because when you’ve seen him use his television show Nathan for You to pivot an average interview into a man chuckling over the merits of drinking his own grandson’s pee, or transform a Harry Houdini-style handcuff trick into escaping becoming a registered sex offender, your expectations around the final product this time around may be a bit more informed.

That said, it’s still hard to prep even the most diehard aficionado fans of that show on what they have waiting for them here, as Fielder moves in with Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, in the weeks leading up to her starting her 11-year sentence for defrauding investors with her company’s non-functioning blood testing device. 

And it is not just for the typically atypical extremes of discomfort Fielder puts you through: the overlong gazes between himself and the impossibly earnest Bambi-eyed Theranos founder as he tries to goad her into divulging just what made her do what she did. 

You can tell people the general findings. You can say, cryptically and confusingly, that You Can See Everything attempts to show you absolutely everything about a person, all while showing how strange and unknowable even the simplest facts about anyone must be. You can say that its spellbindingly beautiful cinematography and unbelievably odd situations combine to deliver a documentary more tightly packaged than a typical drama. 

And you can say that then, seemingly by design, You Can See Everything‘s genuinely unparalleled originality ends up killing the idea of documentary working at all. Because instead of giving a clearer picture of who Holmes is, Fielder shows that the more you see — at least, when it comes to documenting frustratingly unknowable human beings — the less you know.

WATCH | You Can See Everything trailer:

But what is hardest to skirt around are the specifics; the much-anticipated twists and turns that do more to unseat the audience’s expectations on how the medium of documentary can and should work, rather than reveal substantive new information about the woman currently in prison. 

As critics were warned in a personal video message from Fielder and co-director Lance Oppenheim, what makes You Can See Everything such a viscerally unsettling and bracingly revealing experience is its unpredictability. As a viewer, you think you’re getting settled in for a talking-head style doc on corporate malfeasance, but you’re soon buffeted by full-frontal nudity, AI avatars and … wait. What in the world is that celebrity doing here? 

And truly, to watch You Can See Everything is not to gain bombshell new information on what potentially shady, backroom deals went on when and how Holmes created Theranos, the health-care company that promised a device capable of using one drop of blood to test for a near-infinite number of diseases.

Through depositions, hearings, Holmes’ court case (which landed her in the prison camp where she resides today) and Emmy-winning series The Dropout, the general public was already fixated on Elizabeth Holmes.

And for the most part, they came to the conclusion that she was a just another wannabe Steve Jobs. But unlike him, she was willing to lie about the capabilities of her product until somehow, magically, it would start to work — and make money.

And as we learn from Holmes herself — along with her stage mom-esque fiance, Evans — that’s why Fielder is there.

They believe the problem is that people don’t know the real Holmes because an unending slew of misleading headlines and misrepresented facts have constructed a picture of her that couldn’t be further from the truth.

If only Fielder could reveal who Holmes really is, they believe, then they could get back to work. And that work is primarily, as we soon find out, launching Theranos 2.0 (this time, unbelievably, with lasers). 

Fielder’s warning is prophetic: What if he finds out something that Holmes doesn’t want the world to know? And looking back in a wild-eyed stare as realistic as Pinocchio, Holmes’ response is just as sinister. She has nothing to hide.

As Fielder’s investigations continue, there are a number of shocking reveals — and one almost comically villainous surprise antagonist.

We watch as Fielder pushes further and further into Holmes and Evans’ bizarre home life (they apparently prefer their bedframes without mattresses, and have very specific opinions about how one should beat an egg). And we witness him test the inner workings of Holmes’ mind (most astoundingly, with a segment that relies entirely on painstakingly deconstructing an Abbott and Costello bit).

But far more interesting than the unfathomable black box of Holmes’ psyche, is Fielder’s. Like in his various productions that test the weak points and fallibilities of “reality” entertainment, You Can See Everything relies heavily on Fielder’s inability to understand, interpret and capture reality. 

As he drills down into an impossible-to-find absolute truth, the camera repeatedly turns back around to him: seated in Spielbergian silhouette, in increasingly convoluted attempts to get access to his subject who’s now behind bars, or — most ridiculously — in a back-end twist that calls into question the very impulse of making a documentary at all.

Again, cryptic. But without giving away the game, it’s safe to say that the more absurd and artificial tactics Fielder employs, the more the lens focuses on him than on Holmes. Like the other recent documentary phenomenon The History of Concrete (in which Fielder also makes a surprise appearance), the ostensible subject of the documentary becomes less important the longer the documentary itself goes on. 

It instead becomes a documentary about the practice of documentarianism. But where The History of Concrete devolved into a commentary on the dismal industry of documentary-making — securing investors, putting together pitches and selling a story one doesn’t understand until it is finished — You Can See Everything questions its aims. 

What is objectivity, and where does defending truth bleed into defending a subject’s idea of what is true for them? What is this yearning to reach a final, fully-realized truth about — and is the sensation of having done so at the end of documentaries misinformed, or actively dangerous? What even is the difference between fiction and “reality” entertainment, and how far can you push one before it becomes the other? 

These are all questions Fielder seems to posit as he freewheels in and out of Holmes’ life, creating a documentary so stylized and direct it hardly feels like a documentary at all.

In the end, it feels like something more alien, and far stranger: a form studied and poked at so closely, it ceases to be familiar. And when it comes to both Fielder’s subject and his form, it feels like the closest thing to truth we’ll ever get.