Thirty-four days before her 11-year prison sentence, Elizabeth Holmes invited comedian and filmmaker Nathan Fielder to live with her and her husband, and document their every move. “You Can See Everything,” distributed globally by entertainment company A24, is a meta-documentary revealing how easily the scientific field can be corrupted through a case study on Holmes, the world’s most famous biotech fraudster. With a run time of nearly three hours, this film ensures that no detail gets past the camera.
Known as “The Female Steve Jobs,” Holmes’ net worth was once valued at nine billion dollars, rendering her the world’s youngest female billionaire in 2013. As the CEO of former silicon valley biotech company Theranos, she claimed the proprietary technology they invented could screen hundreds of complex tests with just a single prick of blood. However, Holmes’ entire company was founded upon false information and data, and in 2022, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison, on multiple counts of conspiracy and wire fraud.
Throughout the entirety of the film, Fielder asks Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans, intimate and unfiltered questions, seen during a tense line of questioning as to why Holmes chose him specifically to film the documentary. He even asks the couple about their sex life, one of many seemingly arbitrary questions for a film about biotech fraud. Fielder’s seemingly strange lines of questioning are purposefully “odd.” The film acts as more than an investigative documentary on Theranos, and traverses into somewhat of a psychological study on the couple.
Over the course of the film, Fielder is able to immerse himself in their personal lives, acting more as a houseguest rather than a documentarian, and does so with humor. This enables Fielder to ask Holmes unusual questions and reveal a side of her the public is yet to have seen. After Holmes was found guilty, most of the media surrounding Theranos was made up of investigative interviews, court hearings, and federal depositions. Holmes had not made any media appearances for three years prior to accepting to film the documentary, and through Fielder’s work, the audience is shown a more personable side of Holmes, potentially even garnering sympathy for her. Through one-on-one interviews filled with tension and confrontation, Fielder is able to get closer to the root of Holmes’ personality.
Fielder also goes on to pose ethical questions, which engages the audience in an ongoing and relevant discussion about morals in the entertainment industry.
For instance, subjects of documentaries are rarely paid for their roles, due to risk of bias and manipulation when monetary gain is involved. Fielder openly expressed his worry over the integrity of the film, contributing to the meta nature of the film by allowing the audience to evaluate the role of the filmmaker. Throughout the film, Fielder goes past the dilemmas of Theranos, delving into the ethics of the film’s production itself.
“You Can See Everything” is more than a documentary on Holmes and her intensely tumultous life, it is a critique of big medicine corporations in today’s media environment, and the individual psychological factors that influence deceit. Through the film’s intimate psychological analyses on Holmes, “You Can See Everything” shows the viewer how she was able to deceive her way into nine billion dollars, which may even result in viewers and audience members developing a sense of sympathy for Holmes along the way.