You Can See Everything

You Can See Everything
Starring Elizabeth Holmes, Nathan Fielder, Billy Evans, Lance Oppenheim
Directed by Lance Oppenheim & Nathan Fielder

Documentaries are fascinating because they shed light on a topic, person, or event that we've heard about through news articles or other means of investigations, and usually we get a deeper sense of the subject because of it. It's a genre that's specific and has no room to stray away from its intended purpose, and while some excellent ones have been done (including the likes of "Free Solo," "Hoop Dreams," "Summer of Soul" and "An Inconvenient Truth"), one has now taken the title of best documentary ever, and that belongs to Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's "You Can See Everything." It managed to subvert expectations for a generic documentary and took me places I never expected, resulting in a second act that feels almost like a David Finch mystery than documentary, and one I can't talk about because - unlike every other documentary out there - it would give out spoilers. By the end I had goosebumps, and numerous times my jaw was literally on the floor.

Elizabeth Holmes is synonymous with the word "liar," as she supposedly founded Theranos, a private health technology company that claimed to have invented a revolutionary blood testing device capable of running hundreds of tests using only a few drops of blood. She committed fraud on a boundless scale, duping the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Larry Ellison into giving millions to her company that never actually worked, resulting in her serving an eleven year sentence.  One month before her incarceration she invites documentary director Nathan Fielder and a small camera crew to her rented beach house in California to spend time with her, her young children, and her boyfriend Billy Evans. 

It's so hard to talk about this film without giving spoilers or jumping up and down screaming you need to see this, but again it's something that I've never seen before. While the first act comes off as a typical documentary, the second act takes a heel turn completely unexpectedly that exposes more and more about Holmes and her private life that will have you second guessing things you thought you knew, and despite it's title, you wonder if you truly did see everything.

The first half is spent with Holmes and Evans in their rented home, and both are equally off-putting and engaging in equal measure. Holmes doesn't seem to know how to blink, and her large blue eyes take up almost the whole screen in a way that's oddly hypnotizing. She claims she never told a lie - something Billy agrees with - but that's impossible: no one has told the truth always, but yet she has a way about her where you begin to actually believe it. You fall into her web, but then wonder if it's her that's creating the web or someone else pulling her strings. It's surprisingly tense and cinematic, with the A24 flair that makes it so much more engaging - it's visually not like any documentary you've ever seen, let alone its subject matter.

It's the second half - where Holmes is sent to prison - that really gives a tonal whiplash and had me so much more engaged than before, if that was possible. I was on the edge of my seat, my nails digging into the arm rests, and audibly gasped numerous times. It's an explosive film that is so much more than a typical documentary, and despite it's nearly three-hour runtime, I wish it would've gone another hour or so. It's an experience, a once in a lifetime one, and shouldn't be ignored.

The Score: A+