published October 17, 2026
Sure. You Can See Everything, but you should trust nothing.
Dropping right into this documentary, everything seems above board, but after Michael Moore sullied the core essential concepts of documentary filmmaking with big laughs, high grosses and low ethics to drive his own pre-set agenda, everything needs to be questioned.
The central “cast” of characters include a prankster, a fraudster and an ass.
The prankster is Nathan Fielder, who made a name for himself 13 years ago with the Comedy Central series Nathan for You, in which he sells businesses on astonishingly bad business ideas to stir up more sales. Typically, things go poorly. Suitably, the fraudster is Elizabeth Holmes, who – at the movie’s start – is 34 days away from starting an 11-year prison sentence for defrauding investors and deceiving regulators during the Theranos scandal. Several years earlier, Forbes named her the youngest self-made female billionaire at the prime age of 30, with a net worth of somewhere around $4.5 billion at the peak of the Theranos frenzy. The ass is her life partner (but not, legally speaking, husband), Billy Evans.
There is a fourth player. But in honor of the sanctity of the spoiler, that person will not be named here.
You Can See Everything clocks it at six minutes shy of three hours. It sounds like a long slog for a movie about a young woman (a Stanford dropout) who ushered a health technology company into international headlines, only to have everything crash around her. Now, saddled with a $500 million fraud conviction, every penny she earns is being taken away.
Back in 2023, among other headlines that aren’t captured in this movie, is the notion she got pregnant and started a family as a ploy to garner sympathy and – fingers crossed! – avoid any penalties for previous crap conduct.
That ploy (if it was a “legitimate” ploy) didn’t work. But it would fit in perfectly with so many of the shady, questionable conversations and actions that transpire in You Can See Everything.
One of the incredible things about You Can See Everything is midway through the movie Elizabeth starts that prison sentence. She’s no longer accessible. What happens during the second half? Well, that’s when things get really interesting. It’s almost like watching two movies in one.
Without question co-directors Fielder and Lance Oppenheim have made an engrossing feature documentary. But, on the flip side, Oppenheim only weeks ago made headlines as the director of Primetime starring Robert Pattinson, the dramatic telling of Chris Hansen’s controversial takedown of sexual predators on national TV. Hansen has been openly critical of the movie’s portrayal of him and the events. It’s strangely slanted to make Hansen seem even more dangerous than the predators he helped get off the streets
So, there’s that baggage.
Oppenheim remains offscreen throughout. Fielder, though, makes for an interesting lead investigator. He’s older – obviously – and perhaps wiser after those business dealings in his very funny comedy series, one which features Fielder boasting of his great grades while studying business in college up north, in Canada. That boast is set against a shot of his apparently “actual” grades, which were middling at best.
On camera, Nathan expresses his own insecurity directly while speaking with Liz. (That’s right. Call her “Liz” now, in what is a less than authentic reinvention from the not-so-glorious days of Elizabeth Holmes.) Nathan’s not educated in science. He’s not a journalist; he can’t interview her with the same precision so many who previously reported on her might.
This facet is a recall of The Social Reckoning, which opened only a week ago. In Aaron Sorkin’s dramatic telling of Facebook’s gathering of user data and the platform’s addictive nature, Jeff Horwitz, a political reporter from the Wall Street Journal, expresses his insecurities while attempting to cover this high-tech field.
Fielder’s oeuvre is a mash-up of comedy and reality, so even from the audience’s point of view, he’s walking a tightrope of credibility. In Nathan for You, his performance is self-effacing to the point of being almost completely unaware (rather disturbingly – as it turns out – much like Liz).
But that aspect of Fielder also gives him a bold directness that is refreshing. He starts to come across as some sort of odd, unexpected hero of the average Joe. His initial questioning of Liz and Billy is so unfettered and unpolished, it’s borderline joyful to watch. Even, that is, as Liz is consistently and remarkably oblivious. She stares back with such wide eyes, buoyed by a never-ending smile. She seems to be the poster child of pure innocence.
How can that possibly be? Is it all an act on her part? Is she working the long game as part of a diabolical master plan?
You Can See Everything shows a lot for sure. That includes an unnecessary and possibly self-serving scene of Billy going full-frontal in the shower. There’s also Liz crying her eyes out as she contends with leaving her family and moving into prison; it leads to loads of snot pouring from her nose. Tissue, please.
But the movie doesn’t draw any firm conclusions. It instead leaves a feeling of unease, a sense that creepiness and manipulation at a sly, unexpected level is alive and well in the world. Facebook openly manipulates its users and most people gamely play along with only feigned outrage. Liz and Billy might be far more fiendish.
One of the undercurrents in You Can See Everything is a dispute with the New York Times over an interview in which Liz is quoted as saying Amanda Seyfried – in the TV movie The Dropout – portrayed “a character I created.”
Huh. Did Liz let it slip she was playing a character all along, constantly and consistently trying to establish some sort of path to plausible deniability in the event things go sideways? Or did Liz – as Liz and Billy assert without providing recordings to support their claims – state Seyfried portrayed “a character she created”?
What a difference one small word makes.
And yet it successfully builds a shroud of doubt around Liz that is tough to shake.
Who’s creating the false narrative? Liz? The Times?
Nathan?
Just like statistics, documentaries can be made to make any case sound convincing. It’s all about what’s shown, sure. But, equally, it’s also about what’s not shown that might disrupt the sought-after narrative entirely.
To his credit, Fielder addresses this – to a point – in the second half. The first half is filled with Liz’s wide eyes staring back at Nathan. At one point, she’s leaning up against a sofa, staring into Nathan’s eyes even as her foot gently rocks a baby cradle. It’s quite a scene. And there’s an inkling maybe Nathan’s actually falling for this woman.
Later, in the second half, it’s revealed Nathan’s going through a breakup (ultimately, a divorce).
And then there’s one final encounter with Holmes; Nathan’s window of opportunity is shrinking as he hopes to capture as much time with Liz one-on-one in prison before Billy arrives for his regular visit with the kids in tow. Naturally, Nathan’s not allowed to record their conversation held in the prison facilities.
When Liz enters prison, effectively ushering in the second half of the movie, Nathan backs up and through dramatic reenactments retraces his first steps with Liz and Billy, before cameras started rolling on the documentary. In a case of extremely strange timing, they begin the documentary 34 days before Liz heads to the slammer. Nathan moves in with Liz and Billy so he can “see everything” only 14 days before jail time.
He does it again after the prison chat. And his reenactment “partner” – who turns out to be quite an astute questioner of all things Liz and Billy – starts to wonder if Nathan might be omitting portions of his conversation, or misremembering answers, out of a desire to protect Liz.
The documentarian then becomes a questionable – openly so – player in the proceedings, no matter how innocent the cloudy memories might be. After all, he went from reenacting events that happened weeks earlier with seeming extreme clarity only to find himself halting in remembering a conversation with Liz that happened only hours earlier.
There are several dynamics at play.
One should be dismissed outright. In the spirit of documentaries trying to craft a non-existent narrative, Liz’s father is interviewed. There’s namedropping of Enron. The unspoken collusion is there. But, in reality, while Liz’s dad worked at an Enron subsidiary, he had nothing to do with that scandal. It’s as if Fielder and Oppenheim disingenuously tried to create insinuations of guilt by non-association. It’s unfortunate to not be more forthright about the father. The allusions to Enron paint him in the wrong light.
Anyway, there’s the relationship – such as it is – between Nathan and Liz. There’s the outside influence and insight of Nathan’s guest colleague. There’s the Bryan Federal Prison Camp. All those news headlines as Theranos rose to fame with its “iPod of health care.” There’s the New York Times interview.
But one dynamic rattles them all.
Billy Evans.
Unrelatable. Unknowable. Unlikable.
It’s not just Billy’s weird relationship with Liz. It’s Billy in full.
It’s great when Nathan questions him directly, in another applause worthy interview by the non-journalist. To the effect: So you meet this girl at a party. She’s unrecognizable as Elizabeth Holmes given she’s wearing sunglasses and her face is bandaged in the wake of some sort of freak “new dog in the family” incident. You fall in love with her within an hour. You come to realize it’s Elizabeth Holmes, the scandal-ridden woman at the heart of the Theranos controversy and former lover of former Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. She’s mired in lawsuits and her net worth went from billions to zero in no time.
Shortly after meeting her, she’s indicted and you think to yourself, “Yeah. I want this girl in my life?”
It’s a great reality-check conversation that might otherwise be played out between buddies over beers.
But Billy’s nobody’s buddy. Not in this particular circle, anyway.
Billy runs some sort of business that remains frustratingly concealed from all.
Billy somehow managed to gain the “unalienable” power of attorney over Liz Holmes. He “made some calls” to get access to her certified Twitter/X account. He posts things that are clearly not in Liz’s voice of angelic innocence.
And he creates an AI-driven facsimile of Liz, recreating her voice so this fake Liz can say anything.
It’s such a bizarre, sinister turn of events. As the second half gets started and Nathan’s guest enters the scene with all the grace of a bull in a china shop, it seems as though a showdown between Nathan and Billy is in the making. Billy wants to share in the movie’s profits, which is wholly unprecedented and unethical. But money – it is said time and again – means nothing to Liz.
Nathan working as the world’s lens into these lives is an inspired choice, regardless of his previous experience. He’s still the prankster. He gives Liz a highly questionable “gag” gift – a makeshift disguise kit for her big break. It’s classic awkwardness.
And in one of the movie’s best reveals, he plays the classic Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First?” comedy skit to Liz and Billy.
They are completely unfamiliar with the legendary duo. They have never seen the skit.
The big question is how a person gets to be 40-something and lives a life without having encountered Abbott and Costello, even in the new millennium.
But it doesn’t matter.
They don’t get it.
They don’t get the confusion in the communication. They don’t get how Nathan tries to associate the confusion Abbott and Costello create with the confusion Elizabeth created with her “one device” to analyze them all.
Learned people.
Classic book smart.
Classic life stupid.
Seemingly ambitious.
At one time hugely successful.
And yet clueless about life’s basics.
At least seemingly so.
While “Who’s on First?” flies over their heads, Billy can still sit and stare (even glare ominously) back at Nathan and speak of the pair’s incomparable relationship. They both assert they’re building monuments of love to each other.
Great.
Billy throws out this comment, “The fire we’re going through has annealed our love so deeply.”
And it’s Nathan trying to bring him back to a relatable conversation:
“Annealed?”
Hmmm. What’s on Second… again?