What exactly is Nathan Fielder? He’s not a documentarian, as the TV shows he creates often have a script or at least a heavily mapped out structure. He’s not a prankster, although he does dupe people—luring unsuspected marks into his elaborate schemes with his keen listening skills and earnest, almost sheepish demeanor—because his productions are often as sad as they are funny. Mockumentarian doesn’t do it either—he’s not making fun of documentaries, he’s using their loose structure to create his own unique genre, something more akin to absurdist performance art than anything Frederick Wiseman (or Christopher Guest, for that matter) was up to.
So when I found out that Fielder was doing a documentary on Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos who was convicted of conspiracy and fraud, I wondered what on earth she was thinking.
Holmes gave Fielder nearly unfettered access to her and her family (a husband, two small children) in the 34 days leading up to her 11-year sentence in a federal prison. But why allow the most slippery of directors into your home? Why sign up to be interviewed by a man who is literally famous for messing with people?
Once the documentary started, it all clicked for me. Fielder and Holmes are, in fact, alike. Both feign sincerity. Both are impossible to read. Of course, Fielder’s inscrutability is a schtick. But is it entirely? I think there’s a real part of him that is exactly like his “character”—socially awkward, neurotic, and seeking real answers about what makes humans tick.
One of the great questions of the documentary involves a quote that Holmes allegedly gave The New York Times in a 2023 interview. “They’re not playing me,” she said, of various depictions of her on television, including Amanda Seyfried in the critically acclaimed miniseries, The Dropout. “They’re playing a character I created.” The same quote could apply to Fielder. Is he playing himself? Is he playing a simulacrum of himself? Or has he created a fully unique persona just for us?
And the plot thickens. Holmes claims she never gave that quote to the Times. What she maintains she said was, “They’re playing a character they created.”
To be precise, it’s not Holmes who makes that defense, it’s her husband, Billy. “You must’ve said ‘they’ created,” he instructs Holmes, and she nods emphatically.
There was a controlling older man, Sunny Balwani, at the heart of the Theranos scandal. Holmes was romantically involved with him, too, and they started the company together. By some accounts, he was the mastermind of the too-good-to-be-true universal blood test. Whatever the case, it’s clear she is easily manipulated by a certain kind of man—equal parts doting and domineering.
Billy is the third main character in You Can See Everything. Indeed, you might call it the first documentary as throuple. Often the three of them sit around a table, or on a couch, or, in one incredible scene, in an actual bed. Fielder, who co-directed the film with his partner, Lance Oppenheim, likes to film faces in extreme closeup. This is both a way of getting at deeper truths and highlighting the awkwardness of the scenarios he constructs. (He’s also a weaponizer of awkward silences.) Sometimes Fielder and Holmes’ faces get so close, you wonder if they might kiss. In one scene, we see Fielder and Holmes side by side on the couch, their faces filling the frame. A hand is stroking Holmes’ shoulder and, for a second, we actually think it’s Fielder. Then we realize it’s Billy, out of frame, on the other side of couch.
At other times, Fielder acts as creeper, peeping Tom—lurking in doorways and peering through windows. He follows Billy to the gym and then, gratuitously, films him naked in the shower. Sometimes, he records Holmes and Billy when they don’t realize they’re being recorded. And he occasionally wears an earpiece and headphones, as though he’s a member of the German Stasi.
The whole thing is equally surreal and riveting, a Fielder specialty. It’s impossible to tell who’s lying and when. Holmes for her part insists she never lies. She still maintains her innocence. But when she tries to explain that she never claimed her blood device worked, she merely claimed it had the potential to work, her words become tangled, obscure. Later, Fielder says her confusing wordplay reminded him of the Abbott and Costello skit, “Who’s on First?” Neither Holmes nor Billy had ever heard of Abbott and Costello, let along the famous routine (excuse me while I fill out my AARP card). When Fielder plays it for them, something curious happens—Holmes laughs but doesn’t fully get it.
Why did you laugh, Fielder presses.
Because they were all talking at once, she replies.
When he explains the play on the word “Who,” she nods, finally comprehending.
Billy, with his habit of filling in the blanks for both Holmes and, seemingly, everyone else in the room, says that Fielder’s analogy was brilliant. (Fielder had not made an analogy.)
“You’re saying that Liz thinks differently!” he says.
(We eventually find out that Holmes and Billy specifically selected Fielder as their documentarian because he “thinks outside the box” just like they do.)
It turns out control freak Billy, who in many ways is a genuinely doting husband and father, is just as fascinating a figure as his famous wife. Is he a conman? A protecter? Or both?
The Abbott and Costello bit leaves room for the fact that Holmes is neurodivergent. Is it possible she really didn’t comprehend her own grift? When she says she never lies, does she believe that lie?
Even if you think that Holmes is nothing more than a skilled con artist, you have to feel a bit sorry for her. She has two young children. The youngest is still breastfeeding. They’ll only be able to see her in the prison yard. (And through the AI avatar she has created of herself…don’t ask.)
And then time is up and she has to go to prison. A minimum security federal prison in Texas.
This should be the end of the film, but it still has an hour to go.
Trust me when I say the final hour is every bit as riveting and off-the-rails as the first two. If you have any fear of getting bored during a three-hour film, I assure you, you won’t.
Fielder has made something wholly original here. And for all its sleight of hand, it somehow brings us closer to the truth than any conventional documentary could. This is, indeed, the greatest trick that Nathan Fielder ever pulled.