We’re capable of seeing everything
By Nathan Piette Staff Writer
“You Can See Everything” arrived with numbers almost as attention grabbing as its subject. Its estimated $15 million North American opening nearly doubled initial projections of $7-8 million, with more than 2,000 sold-out screenings.
Playing in 855 theaters, it averaged roughly $17,544 per location. It delivered the second-largest opening for a non-concert documentary, behind Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
Its domestic earnings passed $20.8 million against a reported $7 million production budget. Early reception was equally remarkable - a reported 99% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 4.8 average on Letterboxd, described as an all-time high.
Those figures suggest audiences were eager to look inside Elizabeth Holmes’ world, a former CEO convicted of fraud. Whether looking brings us closer to understanding her is another question.
I expected to spend “You Can See Everything” trying to figure out Elizabeth Holmes. Instead, I found myself watching Billy Evans.
In Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s documentary, the Theranos founder prepares to enter prison while living with Evans and their two young children. The access is intimate, sometimes painfully so. But the longer I watched, the more I questioned whether access was helping us understand Holmes, or simply bringing us closer to a story someone else controlled.
Holmes built Theranos around the promise that a few drops of blood from a finger prick test could accomplish what traditionally required much more. That promise attracted powerful supporters, enormous investments, and enthusiastic media coverage.
Behind it were unreliable technology and patients receiving inaccurate results. Her conviction for defrauding investors is established history. What this film leaves unsettled is how consciously she continues to shape other people’s perceptions.
Evans became the most revealing part of that question, and it wasn’t solely from his jaw-dropping full frontal nudity.
Consider breakfast. His commanding takeover while Holmes stirs eggs might seem insignificant beside the scandal surrounding her. To me, it introduces a pattern that becomes harder to dismiss as the film continues. He interrupts, ends conversations when questions become uncomfortable, and appears determined to decide how encounters unfold.
One breakfast cannot explain a relationship. But repeated attempts to control conversations deserve attention in a documentary supposedly built around openness.
Then there is money. Fielder recounts Evans asking, during an unrecorded meeting, for a share of the film’s proceeds. Holmes had left the room, leaving uncertainty about what she knew. Although Evans eventually relinquished that financial interest, the request changes how I understand his participation. His relationship with Holmes offers an opportunity to benefit financially from the public’s fascination with her.
That does not prove profit motivates their relationship. It does make his management of her image harder to separate from his own interests.
His confrontations with Amanda Seyfried, the threats toward Fielder, and his control over access to Holmes after she enters prison deepen that impression. Each encounter made me wonder how much the filmmakers could challenge their subjects before losing the ability to keep filming.
Seyfried’s participation gives the documentary another layer. Having portrayed Holmes in “The Dropout,” she now helps reconstruct moments the cameras missed. Watching an actress interpret a woman who is already interpreting herself for an audience is fascinating. It also makes the title increasingly slippery. We may see more, but we still depend on someone to arrange what we see.
That uncertainty is both the film’s strength and my greatest reservation.
Former Theranos employee and whistleblower Tyler Shultz offers an important challenge. He says the device Holmes promoted is an unfinished later model, rather than the machine used on patients. His criticism suggests that an apparently revealing scene can redirect attention from the evidence that matters. Taking something apart on a table is not the same as explaining what happened.
The documentary’s emotional intimacy creates a similar problem. Watching Holmes face separation from her children is painful. Sympathy is a reasonable response. But sympathy cannot resolve questions about responsibility, and suffering does not establish innocence.
By the end, I suspected Fielder’s hesitation reflected more than uncertainty about Holmes. Evans’ behavior made me wonder whether the possibility of repercussions influenced how directly the filmmaker was willing to judge her. Billy Evans makes bone-chilling eye contact with the director as he explains how his ultra-wealthy family can hurt people that hurt them.
I cannot know Fielder’s private reasoning. The documentary does not establish that fear determined its ending. Still, the pressure I perceived around his questions became part of my experience watching him ask them.
“You Can See Everything” succeeds as an unsettling portrait of access, influence, and the difficulty of interpreting people who know they are being watched. Its ambiguity kept me engaged, but it also left me suspicious. I wanted stronger resistance when openness became another performance.
The film invites us to study Holmes’ face for an answer. I kept looking toward Evans, wondering who controlled the conditions under which an answer could emerge.
“You Can See Everything” is a perfect title, an imperfect promise - someone wanted it that way.
Rating: A+
This movie is nearly 3 hours long, and I wish it was longer. Nathan Fielder is a treasure.
