Spoilers Ahead!
We all wear tinted glasses. We cannot separate what we see from what we already know. Documentarians, journalists, and photographers strive to capture an objective portrait of their subject but, for better or worse, they can’t entirely shed their personal perspective. It’s part of being human.
This curiosity is what drives writer and filmmaker Nathan Fielder, whose work orbits the how and why of human behavior, and often involves pushing people to their limits. He sometimes toes the line between cringe and shock, but it’s all in service of understanding them better. On Nathan For You, a comedy series that originally ran on Comedy Central, he feigned business expertise to convince small businesses to adopt outlandish marketing strategies to increase their sales. On HBO’s The Rehearsal, Fielder staged elaborate, theatrical rehearsals to help people overcome personal challenges; later, he turned those same unconventional resources to help improve commercial pilot communication in an effort to avoid plane crashes (no, really). His docu-reality series stage intricate ruses that allow him—and us—to observe the uncanny behavior of regular people. Fielder brings a Puckish quality to his projects, where he stages human experiments to observe people, often eliciting humor while also revealing new possibilities. These projects made him the perfect person to take on Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, who lied to investors—and the world—about a revolutionary blood-testing device that turned out to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors; she is the protagonist of his latest project, You Can See Everything.
In the documentary, co-directed by Lance Oppenheim (of Primetime), Fielder narrows in on Holmes and her husband, San Diego hotel heir Billy Evans, a little over a month before she surrenders for her 11-year prison sentence. The same unblinking, crystal-blue eyes that made Holmes the face of Silicon Valley feature heavily in You Can See Everything. This time, instead of appearing in cover shoots holding a small blood capsule in her signature sleek black turtleneck, she sits opposite Fielder in a seaside rental in Del Mar, California. The couple has invited the filmmaker into their home 24/7 to show the world the real woman Billy contends has been smeared by the media. Given the chance to observe her up close, Fielder strives to portray this uncanny person objectively, only to find a story full of red herrings. This riveting documentary’s most surprising discovery is the sympathy Fielder manages to conjure for someone the world previously believed was empirically guilty. It leaves you asking: can we really know anyone?
Existing in a reality where Nathan Fielder—the character and the person—studies Elizabeth Holmes feels like an impossible stroke of fate. His trickster interrogation tactics function as a foil to Holmes’s house of mirrors. In January 2022, a federal jury convicted Holmes on four counts of corporate fraud. That’s fact. But Fielder finds that Holmes (and her husband) live in a reality they designed to fit their narrative better. Holmes not only believes she never defrauded anyone, but also asserts she’s incapable of lying. She backs this puzzling assertion with semantic games, telling Fielder that the investor misunderstood her when she said the machine “can” function in certain ways. For some reason, you want to believe her, especially after you realize she seemingly can’t understand the Abbott and Costello joke: “Who’s on First?”
