‘You Can See Everything’ Review: The Slippery Mind of Elizabeth Holmes
New York Times · LC · trust 36/100
The disgraced tech entrepreneur and the comic Nathan Fielder chat and joust in a dizzying movie about truth, reality and the contours of knowledge.
Listen · 8:19 min Share full article 298 Nathan Fielder, left, interviewing Elizabeth Holmes in “You Can See Everything.” Credit... A24 By Manohla Dargis
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At this point, it’s a tossup whether Holmes is better known for her pop-cultural profile or her real-world exploits or if Fielder, the creator of absurdist comedy TV shows like “Nathan for You,” is now the bigger draw. Her fame was relatively brief but sensational. In 2014, Forbes deemed Holmes, the founder of a blood-testing start-up named Theranos, the youngest self-made female billionaire. She claimed, among other things, that her technology would revolutionize health care, which proved untrue. By 2022, Holmes had been found guilty of four charges of fraud for deceiving investors, a turn of events that seemed to baffle even the presiding judge. “What was it that caused Ms. Holmes, regrettably, to make those decisions that she did,” Judge Edward J. Davila asked , before sentencing her to 11 years in prison.
That question hovers over the movie, and is as much a head-scratcher as how Fielder and Oppenheim came to make it. At one point there’s an approving reference to Fielder being someone who looks “at things differently.” It’s a rich line for those familiar with his work; it’s obvious that Holmes and her life partner, Billy Evans, were not. It’s also obvious that they were out to shift public perceptions about her or, at least, the ostensible narrative, and that the filmmakers were aware of the role they were being solicited to play. It’s not for nothing that the documentary opens on a tight shot of Evans’s face. “Nobody knows who she is,” Evans says to someone on the phone, shortly before dropping the words “radical transparency.”
It’s instructive that Holmes isn’t the first person you see in the movie given how she appears in the movie. She was the most famous woman tech entrepreneur to emerge from Silicon Valley, which helped elevate her profile and added frisson of her fall. Her signature look was striking, including long hair that always seemed a smidge messy, as if she were just too busy innovating to comb it. She didn’t seem to blink, which emphasized the whites of her eyes and presumably held others rapt. It’s a neat movie actor trick for creating dominance, which might have been useful in tech-bro land. She blinks in “You Can See Everything” and her distinctive low-pitched voice also seems more natural; it’s about the only thing that does.
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