Elizabeth Holmes doesn’t blink an eye whether she’s pitching investors or, by her own admission, flirting with a man.
Is his lunar gaze haunting or hypnotic? Calculated act or proof of his naivety? At different points in A24’s new documentary, “You Can See Everything,” I vacillated between each of the above.
Much of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s film could be classified as a provocative staring contest, as Fielder investigates Holmes about his life and the demise of his company, Theranos, in the weeks before he was imprisoned to serve an 11-year sentence in May 2023.
The answers he gets from Holmes are rarely satisfactory. (At one point, she insists that she has never lied in her entire adult life; although she was convicted of fraud, she maintains her innocence throughout the film.) But with the camera zoomed in on Holmes’ every micro-expression and tuft of mascara, the film’s power lies in the questions it raises in the space between his words.
In these deeply strange scenes, I found myself oscillating between being panicked by the lack of emotion in Holmes’ blank stare and, to my surprise, pitying her. Then I would quickly become panicked again, because what if pity was exactly the reaction Holmes – a talented and convicted fraudster – was looking for? If she could manipulate her voice to appear more authoritative in the workplace, she could certainly adapt her face to appear more sympathetic on screen.
It turns out that just because you can see everything doesn’t mean you know anything. At least, not with certainty.
“You Can See Everything” Is Not the Movie It Appears to Be
Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes in “You Can See Everything.” A24
Much like its subject, “You Can See Everything” is a slippery movie trick — part character study, part psychological thriller, part surrealist thought experiment. It is not, despite its subject matter, a film about a technology company.
The story of how Holmes went from being named the youngest self-made female billionaire by Forbes to being convicted of defrauding investors as the founder and CEO of blood testing startup Theranos is well-documented. Holmes has already been the subject of a more traditional documentary, Alex Gibney’s “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley,” which exhaustively maps the discrepancies within Theranos, and a scripted miniseries from Hulu, “The Dropout,” which dramatizes Holmes’ origin story and attempts to illustrate how his ambitions outpaced his abilities.
Both works build on the dominant narrative about Holmes, who was often touted as “the next Steve Jobs” and proved particularly adept at wooing powerful men to his cause.
“You want this to be true so badly,” Tyler Shultz, a former Theranos employee turned whistleblower, says of Holmes’ vision in Gibney’s document. “I worked with these devices every day, and she still managed to convince me. When I look back on those conversations, I just think, ‘How did she do that?’
Elizabeth Holmes in “You Can See Everything.” A24
The Holmes we see in “You Can See Everything” is more docile, gentler and, at times, much more submissive than many headlines would have us believe. Yet even Fielder is not immune to his strange charisma.
Early in the film, Fielder admits to Holmes that he did a lot of research into his tenure at Theranos. He challenges his answers to questions, at one point telling Holmes, “I don’t think anyone will ever believe you again.”
Yet as time goes on, Fielder seems alternately perplexed and annoyed by the former prodigy – but never to the point of dislike. On the contrary, Holmes seems to bring Fielder ever closer, like a close-up magician with a deck of cards in his hands and a trick up his sleeve.
Towards the end of the film, Fielder’s memory is called into question. A friend asks if Fielder is retroactively tweaking his interactions with Holmes, perhaps unconsciously, because he has learned to care about her. Maybe he wants to protect her.
Seemingly surprised, Fielder responds, “I’m not putting my feelings into it. I’m just trying to be specific.”
It’s one thing to be told that someone is a master manipulator, as “The Inventor” and “The Dropout” clearly do. It’s another to personally experience the manipulation. “You Can See Everything” offers the audience the latter.
During a question-and-answer session after an early screening of “You Can See Everything” in New York, Oppenheim described how he, Fielder and the crew exchanged interpretations of what they had just seen and heard after the cameras turned off. “The disagreements were so dynamic,” Oppenheim recalls.
It’s been more than three years since their Holmesian-style close encounter, and Fielder said he’s still trying to understand what he felt in her presence.
“I’m really curious about what other people think and what they think about certain things,” Fielder said. “I think this will actually help me understand.”
“You Can See Everything” is in theaters now.
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