“You Can See Everything” Is Changing The Game
By Alex Gaines
It’s very rare to watch a feature film—a documentary? something between the two terms?—and watch an art form actively evolve before your eyes. Directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim have created such a masterful work of journalism and narrative storytelling with “You Can See Everything” that, even in witnessing its most disturbing and unsettling moments, I felt an Elizabeth-Holmesian smile appear on my face with the knowledge that I was witnessing something truly gargantuan for the future of filmmaking.
I do feel compelled to acknowledge my bias before I get into the movie itself - if there was any one factor that could convince me to see a three-hour documentary screening starting at 10 pm, of course it was going to be Nathan Fielder. I’ve been a fan of the comedian and filmmaker since high school, where I first discovered his Comedy Central show “Nathan for You,” with each episode exploring one of Fielder’s absurdist business marketing ideas. The show itself is referenced in “You Can See Everything,” with Fielder ironically noting that he - a caricatured business scammer - is working with Elizabeth Holmes, potentially the most famous fraudster of the century. This dynamic is at the heart of the film: how are we, the audience, supposed to trust either of these people not to deceive us, whether it’s for the film’s narrative purposes or the truth of a federal crime?
Fielder and Oppenheim’s ability to convey themes of deception, truth, love, and the purpose of a documentary itself via said medium’s inherent restrictions is remarkable. Of course, every “scene” here was done in one take, as Nathan’s reactions to some truly absurd comments from Holmes and her husband Billy Evans are captured in real time. In spite of that need for constant camerawork and extensive technical setups behind the scenes (“did the barber have to wear a lav?” I questioned my friend as we watched Evans talk to his hairdresser), every moment of the film is beautifully lit and framed.
There’s a heavy emphasis on close-ups throughout the film, physically confronting the viewer with the intricacies of emotions on Holmes and Evans’ faces. This choice also undeniably positions them as real people - something generally assumed for most documentaries but must be done with extra precautions here, as most media characterizes Holmes as a freakish sociopath, her piercing blue eyes like those in “The Great Gatsby” in every part of the film’s marketing, almost cartoonish in their villainy. Yet, when Holmes tells Fielder she’s finally at the point in her life where she lets people see her cry, the camera immediately captures a tear slowly falling as Nathan stares back at her, stern and confronting. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object, one could say.
It’s difficult to tiptoe along the lines of spoiler territory—there’s a switch in structure around the halfway point of the movie so thrilling and unexpected that I’ll choose not to discuss it in favor of audiences going in blind—but after Fielder and Oppenheim must stop recording Holmes as she begins her prison sentence, they are still able to explore even more of her story for the next hour and a half of the film’s almost three-hour runtime. Every one of those 174 documented minutes is captured and edited with the intention of some famous director’s $300 million budget magnum opus - but with this type of work from 43-year-old Fielder and 30-year-old Oppenheim, it’s reasonable to say the best is yet to come.
