You Can See Everything is a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, and it sounds like nobody on set could agree on what was happening. That might be the whole point.
The film, directed by Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder, follows Holmes and her partner Billy Evans as they prepare for Holmes to report to her 11-year federal prison sentence for fraud. The movie was shot over three years, and the filmmakers have opened up about the strange dynamic that developed as they worked.
Fielder described a moment early in the process when meeting Holmes for the first time. “When I met her, I remember having this weird experience where she seems so genuine at times [then] being like, ‘Okay, I know she’s a liar,”” he said. The contradiction stuck with him.
The Origin Story
The film’s origins are almost perfect, in the filmmakers’ telling. Oppenheim noticed that Fielder had watched part of Some Kind Of Heaven on the Indee screener app and reached out. That’s adorable in an exclusively film-nerd sort of way.
As their friendship grew, they went to a Magic Castle performance together. That reminded Oppenheim that Holmes had expressed interest in making a documentary with A24. Fielder was convinced to meet with her, even though he initially felt her story had been “very told.”
His curiosity was also driven by reading John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood: Secrets And Lies In A Silicon Valley Startup. A24 agreed that Oppenheim and Fielder could “pull the plug” before committing to a project if they felt things were going sideways.
Shooting Begins
Once the cameras rolled, the tension between the filmmakers became the story. “It wasn’t until we started shooting that moments would happen—some of them are in the film—and then after Lance and I would talk about what we thought happened there,” Fielder said. “And we’d be completely disagreed on what something meant to us and what we thought was happening. Then we were like, ‘Oh, this is really interesting—if we can’t agree on what’s happening, there’s something here.’ And our curiosity sort of just like drove us from there.”
Oppenheim compared the experience to living out the cursed wish fulfillment depicted in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. “It felt we were in, like, the zone from Stalker every day when we were there,” Oppenheim said. “It was just, like, literally, the laws of reality, everything we thought was going on outside, just evaporated.”
Cognitive Dissonance Among Everyone
The filmmakers aren’t the only ones who felt the tension. “Every person that worked on this movie was going through a similar feeling of cognitive dissonance,” Oppenheim said. “We would unpack the day’s events, and no one could agree on the seemingly mundane moments that would transpire. Everyone had a different point of view.”
Fielder and Oppenheim started thinking about how to capture that feeling rather than trying to explain it. “So Nathan and I started thinking if we can just try and get out of the way of this, capture this, and attempt to bring people as close to that experience of being there as possible, then maybe there’s an interesting project to be made out of this,” Oppenheim said.
The Timeline
Holmes was convicted of defrauding Theranos investors on January 3, 2022. She reported to her 11-year federal prison sentence in April 2023. The film was shot over three years, with Holmes and Evans inviting Fielder and Oppenheim to film in their home more than a month before Holmes reported to prison.
The film is released in theaters on October 16.
Key Facts Box
- Holmes was convicted of defrauding Theranos investors on January 3, 2022
- She reported to her 11-year federal prison sentence in April 2023
- The film was shot over three years
- The film is released in theaters on October 16
A Documentary About a Liar
The film is ultimately about the chaos of people, as the filmmakers suggest. But the chaos they are documenting is not just Holmes’s. It is also their own. They are admitting that they could not agree on what was happening, and they are asking audiences to trust that confusion rather than demand clarity.
The film is scheduled for release on October 16. It will be interesting to see whether the finished product captures the same sense of disorientation that the filmmakers describe.
A Rare Approach
Most documentaries strive for coherence. This one seems to be embracing the opposite. The filmmakers are asking audiences to sit with the discomfort of not knowing what is happening, rather than smoothing it over with narration or talking heads. That is a bold move, especially when the subject is someone who has spent years convincing people of things that turned out not to be true.
The film is a portrait of a moment, filtered through the eyes of people who were not sure what they were seeing. The filmmakers have said they want to bring viewers as close to that experience as possible, and the admission that they could not agree on what was happening suggests they are willing to let the footage speak for itself.
The film is scheduled for release on October 16. It will be interesting to see whether the finished product captures the same sense of disorientation that the filmmakers describe.
The Stages of Filming
- Oppenheim notices Fielder watching Some Kind Of Heaven on the Indee app and reaches out.
- Fielder reads John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood and decides to meet Holmes.
- The filmmakers shoot the film over three years.
- Holmes reports to her 11-year federal prison sentence in April 2023.
A Documentary About a Liar
The film is ultimately about the chaos of people, as the filmmakers suggest. But the chaos they are documenting is not just Holmes’s. It is also their own. They are admitting that they could not agree on what was happening, and they are asking audiences to trust that confusion rather than demand clarity.
The film is scheduled for release on October 16. It will be interesting to see whether the finished product captures the same sense of disorientation that the filmmakers describe.
See the video the story is built around at The A.V. Club.
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