"You Can See Everything" Movie Review

A little over a decade ago, Elizabeth Holmes was known as the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world. Then, in 2022, she was found guilty by a U.S. district judge of four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy for cheating investors. If you are unfamiliar with the story of Theranos, its meteoric rise and fall, don’t worry, because watching “You Can See Everything” is a great way to catch yourself up to speed.

Released in theaters on Oct. 19 of this fall, “You Can See Everything” follows Elizabeth Holmes and her husband Billy Evans 34 days before the start of Holmes’ prison sentence. Canadian filmmaker and comedian Nathan Fielder is invited, along with Lance Oppenheim, to document her final days at her home with her family in Del Mar, California, with radical transparency.

The nearly three-hour runtime for this documentary was enough to dissuade me from watching, but after seeing that the film reached a very high average rating on the movie reviewing website Letterboxd, I just had to see if “You Can See Everything” lived up to the hype. It did.

Seldom do I come out of a three-hour documentary wanting to see more. “You Can See Everything” was one of those documentaries that leaves you with more questions than answers. Although being sentenced to 123 months in federal prison and being ordered to pay $452 million in restitution to victims, Holmes still maintains her innocence. You may have seen the clip of Holmes, unnaturally wide-eyed, saying to Fielder, “Why would I deceive you?” in the trailer for the film. The scene comes off as extremely ironic because we all know that Holmes is deceitful. She lied to her investors and to the media about the “Edison Machine” and the complex medical tests that it couldn't do. She has been labeled a pathological liar by the media and even disputes this in the film with Nathan Fielder.

But did Holmes lie? Why would she invite a film crew into her home and give them complete and unbridled access to her personal life? We, the audience, can see everything, and it's still not enough to understand the enigmatic mind of Elizabeth Holmes. Even though Fielder does a great job confronting Holmes with her own past. The twists and turns this movie guides the audience through are so completely unpredictable because of her. After Holmes is sent to prison, the narrative arc shifts towards Evans, Holmes’ long-term partner, and he plays a much bigger role in the film than I anticipated, adding another fascinating perspective to an already complex set of circumstances.

Overall, I really enjoyed the film. I’m usually not a big fan of documentaries either, let alone ones that are three hours long. The only minor objection I have to the film is the poor exposition it gave in illustrating everything leading up to the first of the 34 days before Holmes’s prison sentence. Overall, I would give this movie a solid nine out of ten, and I would recommend readers see it for themselves. If you don’t already know anything about Holmes and the Theranos scandal, you don't need to watch anything else before seeing “You Can See Everything.” However, the documentary does make several references to the 2022 Hulu miniseries “The Dropout,” starring Amanda Seyfried, who plays Holmes in a dramatized version of events. Additionally, if readers would like a better understanding of Nathan Fielder and his style of comedy, I recommend watching his HBO series “The Rehearsal” to familiarize themselves with the comedian.