You Can Check Everything

Review: You Can See Everything: Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim Sympathize With the Devil

You can see the whole thing in cinemas from October 15th.

Running for nearly three hours, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's You Can See Everything is a stunning and disturbing documentary about Silicon Valley and whether you can really know anyone. It focuses on Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who granted filmmakers unprecedented access about a month before her prison term begins in 2023. However, the film is as much about cults and cultural myths as it is about Holmes' culpability—not to mention Fielder's characters and TV personalities like the filmmaker. Obsessive joke work with hidden honesty.

The whole here feels greater than the sum of its parts, due to the charm of its eerie filmmaking and the sad scope of its ambition as a work of sad, self-reflexive cinema. Filled with suffocating 4:3 close-ups with long lenses, and drenched in shadows to hide motive, the film's brutal form feels like the product of aggressive surveillance in the midst of a mile-a-minute chase. While most of it consists of simple, static conversations - a glorious sight.

It first unfolds in a San Diego beach house rented by Holmes and his wife, wild-eyed hotel heir Billy Evans. We are reacquainted with Holmes' story through news clips that capture his Daily Life, a sort of "already active" segment that describes his conviction for fraud. However, when the host utters the phrase "morbid liar," the camera first falls on Fielder as he appears in the corner like a poltergeist.

The joy of Fielder's awkward presence in this domestic setting—headphones at the ready around his neck, as if he's playing the role of "director"—is sharply contrasted with unsettling zooms into empty spaces and people's expressions. While Holmes and Evans raise their two young children, Fielder searches for the couple by sitting intimately on their couch and making passing conversations wherever he can steal them.

With the saturation ramped up to an uncanny edge—in sync with Oppenheim's Chris Hansen's drama from this year, Primetime—Holmes' deep blue eyes become Fielder's biggest challenge yet, as a man seemingly drawn to her charms while not entirely convinced by her claims that she's done nothing wrong. And yet, when it comes to the seemingly magical device that tests his every ailment, he gives her a huge benefit of the doubt if she just keeps unraveling the tight thread, thereby allowing Holmes and Evans to raise themselves with their own bullets.

As Fielder gets more involved with the couple, it's hard not to see the Nathan For You host as if he's looking in a mirror of sorts. Holmes is a manipulative fellow, though perhaps more adept at it than Fielder. Fielder's TV character is a slightly naïve, self-indulgent person who secretly leads his subjects in a certain direction through suggestion. But while Holmes's goal is entertainment, it also secures Holmes' financial investment, something he continues to work on even as his prison sentence looms.

The visual framing creates a palpable closeness and tension between Fielder and Holmes, but creates an equally compelling portrait of Evans as the man potentially pulling the strings. However, the question of whether Holmes allows him to do this or whether he is even aware of what he is doing remains a major point of inquiry. It's rare to see a documentary that gradually deals with its production and finances, but these are some of its most exciting developments. You can see everything, it really wants you to witness all its dimensions.

You might wonder why the film occupies such a huge running time, but the answer becomes obvious when it reaches its second half. The question of who Holmes really is - a fraud in denial? Anyone delusional? - is left horribly open-ended. Not only does this imbue the film with a debilitating uncertainty about the kinds of tech giants that rule our lives, but it forces Fielder to turn to a very surprising ally for an alternative look into Holmes' mind.

Then again, maybe this guy's identity isn't so surprising if you go with the cultural imagery of Holmes and Fielder's M.O. But the film remains remarkably unpredictable by creating the conditions in which people are forced to watch and reflect rather uncomfortably on existing transcripts and footage. Bit by bit, the aforementioned celebrity becomes complicit in Fielder's audit of the truth by inviting fireside chats that reveal the gradual frustrations of this particular journey.

As the questions about Holmes and Evans become more complex, the film becomes a spectacular misfire (a story within a story) through rehearsal-like reenactments. The purpose of these is not only to fill in the gaps left by Holmes' imprisonment, but to use cinematic tools to extract all possible facts at once to see which one fits...if any. It's exactly what you'd expect from Fielder's experiments, and yet it remains shocking at every turn. In some cases, it's hard to believe what you're seeing and hearing was recorded in the first place.

It's a sympathetic look at someone who, despite the damage he's done, seems to be trying to move on and recreate the past... not unlike Fielder himself.

The possibility of the production itself falling apart through a sudden revocation of access is always there, and it's certainly not helped by the fact that Fielder is at his most confrontational as an on-screen character. His provocations serve a deeply human search for not just who Holmes is, but why he is—a mystery that becomes more perplexing the more we learn about him and the closer Fielder gets to him. What he gets is a sympathetic look at someone who, despite the damage he's done to him, seems to be struggling to move on and recreate the past... not unlike Fielder himself.

The result is fascinating, woven from creepy close-ups and furtive investigations into the kind of minds that occupy the modern tech industry. It's one of the most electrifying and thrilling films you're likely to see this year, and by the time it's over, its mammoth 174 minutes might not be enough.

Can you see everything?

Finally, either in the theater or in the stream.

An unstoppable force collides with an unstoppable object in You Can See Everything when Nathan Fielder investigates Silicon Valley con artist Elizabeth Holmes. Co-directed by Fielder and Primetime's Lance Oppenheim, this massive and moving documentary builds on haunting close-ups and startling reconstructions for a compassionate portrait of what can be anything from denial to delusion...or perhaps an attempt to convince you that it's one or the other.