W hen the credits began to roll at the screening I attended of , Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s buzzy new documentary, it was like waking up from a dream. I walked away from those three hours — which felt like quite a bit less, despite the long sequences free of dialogue — with my opinion of Elizabeth Holmes unchanged: namely, that she is guilty of everything for which she is currently serving a prison sentence and a great deal more besides, the least of which is her consistently unnerving affect. That said, for those three hours, it was a great deal of fun imagining, along with Fielder and Oppenheim, that there might be something else, something to her.You Can See Everythingmore
Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, present the project as an act of “radical transparency,” though anyone familiar with her case is likely to immediately read this as reputation laundering. It turns out, though, that she’s in safe hands with Fielder and Oppenheim. Their interrogation of the facts of her case is minimal.
Anyone wishing for a “gotcha” moment in which Holmes is forced to confront the enormity of her deceptions will leave disappointed. Not only does she double down on the capabilities of Theranos’s technology, but she goes even further, claiming that she has never lied — not just about Theranos but . The best Fielder can get from her is that it is possible that she might in the past have told a white lie on the order of untruthfully claiming to be feeling unwell to get out of attending an acquaintance’s party. But she “can’t remember” a single instance.You Can See Everythingin her entire life
For a thorough accounting of her bigger lies — of which, naturally, she also has no recollection — one can consult investigative reporting, John Carreyrou’s , court transcripts, , or a streaming adapted from that podcast (and thus lightly fictionalized). What audiences will get from will not add much of substance to that story.Bad BloodYou Can See Everythinga podcastminiseries
Rather, the movie will tell a more self-contained tale in which Fielder interrogates what it is that he sees in those weeks before Holmes’s incarceration. Initially guarded and skeptical, Fielder gradually seems to undergo something resembling Freudian transference. He subjects Elizabeth Holmes to his particular, somewhat paranoiac method of close reading, which — those familiar with his shows and will not be surprised to learn — involves meticulous reenactments in which he invests the smallest of details (a gesture, a word) with outsize significance.Nathan for YouThe Rehearsal
He arguably begins to mirror Holmes herself in this respect: there is a curious resonance between the two, and I find it as suspicious in the former as I do the latter. That is, if Holmes seems to put on an utterly unconvincing babe-in-the-woods act in the face of all of the forces arrayed against her, Fielder, in going so far out of his way to give Holmes the benefit of the doubt, displays — or performs — an almost total credulity that, while it certainly serves a narrative purpose, lacks verisimilitude. Simply put, it is hard to believe that he believes her, however much it adds to the complexity and interest of the film to — for a time — suspend that disbelief.
Exhibit A is the sequence in which Fielder shows Holmes the famous Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on First?” Holmes appears not to understand the basic situation underlying the frenetic dialogue: that there is a baseball player named “Who.” While she feigns amusement, she is unable to explain why. Evans seizes upon this supposed lack of understanding in order to claim that Holmes just understands the world differently than the rest of us. This is highly tendentious, of course: what an ordinary (maybe even neurotypical?) person — say, the sort of normie who might be called to serve on a jury — understands as “lying” could look quite different to the masters of the universe.
Art House Methods for the Megaplex
In any case, is a terrifically entertaining entry in the canon of documentary filmmaking for the age of the uncertainty principle, in which the film knows, and is at a basic level interested in, the fact that the act of observation is an act the object of observation. One is seeing people who are constantly, acutely aware that they are being seen, and they try their best to be seen a certain way. This calls the documentary genre into question, and radically so — which is no innovation on Fielder and Oppenheim’s part, but it is notable that they managed to pull it out of art house cinema and onto commercial screens, and that it is currently causing about as much ink to flow as any recent blockbuster has.You Can See Everythingupon
Given the directors’ previous work — Oppenheim’s (2020), (2024), and (2026), and Fielder’s television projects (2013–18), (2022–present), and (2023–24), his collaboration with Benny Safdie — it is unsurprising that the film resists an explicit political interpretation.Some Kind of HeavenRen FairePrimetimeNathan for YouThe RehearsalThe Curse
But the portrayal of the Holmes–Evans couple is an almost caricatural embodiment of the milieu out of which they emerged, one whose influence over our debased present is difficult to overstate. Consider the evolving representation of Evans, an MIT graduate who in the beginning of the film seems a culturally liberal sort, conversant in therapy/wellness speak — it’s he who utters the words “radical transparency.” This stretch of was filmed, appropriately, in coastal Southern California, where the couple spends the majority of their time together before Holmes departs to serve her sentence. Even there on the beach, however, Evans’s performances of empathy are often comically inept, a violent rage just barely concealed beneath an “I hear what you’re saying. . . . ” Another tense moment sees Billy somewhat forcefully wrest a bowl of cracked eggs from Elizabeth, who is presumably beating them too gently. Is Billy in fact a controlling partner? And wouldn’t that be a little convenient, particularly given that Holmes’s defense of her own conduct relies in part on being prey to another controlling man: Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her former lover and chief operating officer of Theranos?You Can See Everything
Just before Holmes’s prison sentence begins and midway through the film, the family relocates from California to Texas to be near the minimum-security facility where she’ll be incarcerated. Evans is now in Austin. As has been known to happen for other tech entrepreneurs making the move from California to Texas, his physical displacement is accompanied by an explicit embrace of hypermasculinity and extremely online right-wing politics. His Austin home decor is minimal, though there are a number of pet reptiles crawling about, and a framed motivational poster of Winston Churchill adorns the wall above his desk. The Billy of the latter half of is suddenly a gun-toting Charlie Kirk admirer with “vengeance in [his] heart.” He would also like for you to know that he’s a very talented lover — a boast that’s less surprising after an earlier shot in which Billy has seemingly invited the camera for a close-up of his penis.You Can See Everything
In the late sequences, Billy’s aggression is on full display, as when he berates Amanda Seyfried, as much on the late Kirk’s behalf as on Holmes’s. Or when he attempts to shut down Fielder’s line of questioning with one of his and Holmes’s collaborators, who is in the process of acknowledging, if only by implication, that the original version of the Theranos blood-testing device did not in fact work.
The Hubris of the Wannabe Tech Overlords
That the film exists at all is itself a monument to the hubris of Holmes, whose adoption of the tech industry’s modus operandi of empty mythology as marketing allowed her to get as far as she did. It must have been as stupefying as it was exhilarating the first go-round. Why wouldn’t she think it could work once more? Alas, pathological liars who never completed their Stanford degrees seem to be about a a .dimedozen
Regarding Elizabeth Holmes, insofar as you can see everything, it’s because there’s not a whole lot there. But Fielder and Oppenheim’s considerable achievement lies in their ability to elevate such material into a genuinely compelling work of art. Go see it with someone; you’ll be talking about it for days.
This article originally appeared in , a democratic socialist magazine publishing long-form essays and analysis on politics, economics, and culture. JacobinSubscribe to the print edition for $20 a year.