‘You Can See Everything’ Is Pretty Meta

A culmination of elements, You Can See Everything works together to bend reality and warp its own narrative to viewers. The documentary follows Elizabeth Holmes, the convicted creator of health technology company Theranos, as she nears the beginning of her decade-long federal prison sentence. Perhaps one of the most interesting elements of the documentary’s premise is that Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans, invited actor and comedian Nathan Fielder into their home for filming. 

Fielder is known for having an insanely deadpan and satirical comedy style. His show Nathan For You makes viewers question how much of the show is scripted and how much is reality. Almost all of Fielder’s public-facing persona is a bit, which coincides interestingly with the documentary. A documentary seeking to humanize Holmes, who is often seen as “otherly” by the public uses someone not known for transparency and authenticity to do so. 

The film’s first hour is sluggish, following Holmes and Evans in their day-to-day life, which has no shortage of awkward and tense moments. Notably, there’s a scene with eggs, and a scene discussing the comedy routine “Who’s on first?” Both scenes are just plain weird, and leaves lots of room for viewers to fill in the blanks. It’s up to them to decide if Fielder’s being genuine or playing the Nathan Fielder role, and same for Holmes and Evans. 

In 2022, Hulu released a drama series The Dropout, starring Amanda Seyfried as Holmes. In You Can See Everything, Holmes agrees to watch a few episodes of The Dropout, before ending the watchparty, finding it upsetting and disturbing. This echoes an early focal point of the doc, which shows Holmes and Evans disputing a quote attributed to Holmes by a New York Times journalist, in which she allegedly said “They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created.” 

The next scene of the documentary reveals Fielder showing Seyfried Holmes’ reaction to Seyfried’s portrayal of her—super meta. This is when the story starts to become a circular experience, rather than a linear one. Once Seyfried is introduced, she becomes central to the documentary, essentially filling in for Holmes’ screen time alongside Fielder whilst Holmes is in prison. Once the film leans into its meta aspects, like these, the pace accelerates and the doc becomes a completely new type of movie. 

Seyfried and Fielder begin to look into the dynamic between Holmes and Evans, prompting the latter half of the film to become (essentially) a profile on the two’s relationship, and how it’s changed with Holmes’ prison sentence. 

Many of the film’s most interesting moments come from the way Evans carries himself and treats Holmes. He’s often shown cutting her off, shutting down conversations between her and Fielder, and seemingly controlling a lot of aspects of her life. It’s revealed that he runs her social media, and posts on her behalf without her knowledge, and asks to be compensated for the documentary (an uncommon and ethically gray practice in documentary filmmaking). 

The documentary is most interesting in the way it takes viewers on an unexpected journey, and calls a lot of its own narrative choices into question during its runtime. Instead of crafting an obvious narrative, the story often presents things to viewers, and shows conversations between Fielder and Seyfried to suggest different outcomes that are then disputed by subsequent footage and information. 

Ultimately, You Can See Everything bends reality, and creates more questions than answers. It transcends traditional documentaries by turning itself into a thriller and mystery that tells you to question everything it has told you, despite promising implied transparency with its title.

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