You Can See Everything... But None of It May Be True

October 2026

 

On the day I went to You Can See Everything...

The theater was sold out...

 

At 3:00 on a Friday afternoon...

 

For a documentary...

 

When was the last time that happened?

 

And when I walked out of the theater...

 

I understood why...

 

And it wasn’t just because you got to watch Amanda Seyfried get drunk with Elizabeth Holmes’s husband...

And get into a fight with him about Charlie Kirk...

 

Which was bizarre...

 

But because

 

Although...

You Can See Everything...

Is a documentary about the founder of Theranos...

It is much, much more....

 

This film is a labyrinth of manipulation and delusion...

By both the subject and the documentarian....

 

And it is also a film within a film...

 

But what you won’t find in You Can See Everything...

 

Is the truth about Elizabeth Holmes...

 

For there is no “truth” buried here...

 

Instead, this movie is made up of multiple truths...

Those of Elizabeth Holmes, her husband Billy Evans, the documentarian Nathan Fielder... and in a strange twist...

The actress Amanda Seyfried...

Who played Holmes in the Hulu miniseries, The Dropout...

 

A Gordian knot of conflicting truths...

And character studies...

 

Of everyone involved....

 

So you will not walk out of this film with the definitive truth about anything involving Elizabeth Holmes...

 

But you will start to think about documentaries in a different way...

 

Because what is really revealed in this film...

 

Perhaps unwittingly...

But who knows...

 

Because this is a Nathan Fielder project...

 

Is not whether Elizabeth Holmes was a sociopath or the innocent victim of manipulative men...

 

But rather the transactional nature of documentary filmmaking...

By everyone involved...

How the feelings of the filmmaker for his subject...

Can change over the course of the project...

And how all these factors influence the final cut...

 

So at the end you are not sure whether you saw a movie about Elizabeth Holmes...

Or one about Nathan Fielder...

 

But if we start at the beginning...

 

Because You Can See Everything has three distinct chapters...

 

You see Nathan Fielder invited by Holmes and her husband...

To live in their home and film them in the month before she goes to prison...

 

Which is filmed in Lance Oppenheim’s preferred aesthetic...

Of poorly lit, depressing brown and mustard colored interiors...

 

And you think...who would want to spend their last weeks before going to prison doing that?

 

So at first you think Holmes is trying to use Fiedler to create a sympathetic narrative...

Before she is silenced sitting in prison for the next eleven years...

 

So is this the Elizabeth... and her husband...

Who are always selling...

Scamming...

Trying to create a narrative...

 

And the way they talk about their relationship...

Comes across like they wrote the script together...

And leads to the least believable scenes in the documentary...

 

But then there is Fielder....

 

Who films himself lurking behind corners... like a creepy voyeur...

And asking questions with such a flat affect...

And deadpan delivery...

That you begin to think...

 

Is this another of Fielder’s sketch comedies?

 

Did he come to make fun of Holmes?

 

If so... it is a hard sell...

Because Holmes comes across as guileless...

At times delusional...

Perhaps on the spectrum...

But not inauthentic...

 

Or at least in how Fiedler chose to edit this film...

 

So you feel him being sucked in...

By those big blue unblinking eyes...

 

And then there is the husband, Billy...

Who Fielder films in the gym... and naked in the shower...

Making you go... WUWT?

 

Why did Fielder choose to put Billy’s anatomy...

Front and center...so to speak...

In his documentary...

 

So you start to wonder...

 

What goes into the decision by a filmmaker to put a shot like that in the final cut?

 

Billy is a handsome man in good shape...

But Fielder clearly does not like him...

And starts to portray him as a Svengali...

 

With Holmes as the victim...

 

So you can feel the shift in Fielder...

 

And this begins with the scene with the scrambled eggs...

 

Was Billy bullying Elizabeth...

Or was she not that invested in how the eggs were scrambled...

And so didn’t care that he took over...

Because she had other things to do...

 

You could read this either way...

But Fielder obviously wants it to be pivotal...

And seen as a tell...

For the narrative he is in the process of creating...

 

Then Holmes goes to prison...

And Fiedler loses film access to her...

 

So Chapter Two begins...

 

With Fiedler interviewing Amanda Seyfried, who played Holmes in the miniseries...

 

Now this is an actress who first became famous playing a high school mean girl...

And she does herself no favors in this documentary...

Because she comes across as opinionated...and unlikable...

 

But like Fielder... she vacillates in how she feels about Holmes...

 

When she sees the footage that Fielder shows her...

Of Billy interacting with Elizabeth...

She gets on her girl power high horse about how men should not be allowed to dominate women like that...

 

So she starts to think of Holmes as the victim of nefarious and manipulative men...

 

Which is why her claws really come out when she meets Billy...

Who takes her to task for some of her social media comments about the death of Charlie Kirk...

And threats begin to fly...

As the blood alcohol level increases...

 

But the most compelling part of this section of the documentary...

Is when Fielder shows Seyfried film...

Of the reaction of Holmes ...

To watching Seyfried’s portrayal of her in The Dropout...

 

Which Holmes supposedly had never seen before Fiedler showed it to her...

 

Holmes begins to cry... and has to look away...

 

And Fielder then captures on film...

Seyfried’s reaction to this...

 

So you see her realization ...

That her portrayal may have caused pain...

For a woman for whom she is starting to feel some sympathy...

 

But then bang...

 

Seyfried shifts gears again...

When Fielder tells her that Holmes told him...

That her portrayal of Holmes in The Dropout

Led Elizabeth to be abused by the other prisoners...

 

In reaction... Seyfried turns defensive... and mean...

 

Which then has an impact on the third section of the documentary...

 

Where Fielder has Seyfried play Holmes in re-enactments of scenes...

That took place between himself and Holmes...

That he couldn’t film because Holmes was in prison...

 

And Seyfried doesn’t handle this well...

Her animosity at this point toward Holmes is too palpable for her to give the performance Fielder wants...

 

Which makes you think that if everything Holmes does is a performance...

 

It’s clear who is the better actress...

 

But at this point you sense that Fielder has decided who he wants to be the real villain of this story...

And it’s Billy... for many reasons...

 

His politics among them...

 

And how he is using Holmes’s image while she is in prison...

To both shape a narrative and monetize it...

 

And this section makes Holmes look like the victim of not just Billy....

But a series of other hustlers...and hangers-on...

 

But then Seyfried calls Fiedler out...

And implies that he has been sucked in by Holmes...

 

And then what Amanda says resonates...

 

And makes you start to wonder...

 

How much of how Billy is portrayed in this film...

Was influenced by how Fiedler decided he wanted to portray Elizabeth...

After living with her... and Billy... in their home....

 

But that brings us to the closing scenes...

That further muddy the waters of the narrative Fiedler wants to tell ...

 

And hint at why Fiedler may have made the choices he did...

That shaped the image of Elizabeth’s relationship with her husband....

 

These scenes center on the negotiations that preceded the making of the documentary...

And expose its transactional nature...

And an important.. and unusual concession... Fiedler made to get this project off the ground...

Which may have influenced how he went on to portray Billy...

 

And then Elizabeth blows up the story Fiedler wants to tell about this...

 

So nothing quite fits any narrative...

 

Fiedler’s...

Elizabeth’s...

Billy’s ...

Or Amanda’s...

 

So who is the real wizard behind the curtain?

 

That question is never answered...

 

But the ways in which this movie...

Makes you think about manipulation...

And how it seeps into ...

Everything everyone does in this movie...

 

Is why it is a must-see...

 

And a fascinating view of the dynamics that influence ...

What happens in the editing room...

When the final cut is made...

 

And that is the real reason to see You Can See Everything...

 

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