Truth is perspective in You Can See Everything

Imagine you walk into a mirrored room, and every mirror shows you a completely accurate reflection of yourself, so accurate that, in fact, you begin to doubt which one of you is the real you. Is it enough to feel your physical body in space or is every reflection just as much you as you, endless replica of a self lost to itself. This is the nature of You Can See Everything, the documentary about disgraced Theranos CEO and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes made by filmmakers Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder. It’s a mirrored room where reality fails in the face of a post-truth world, a woman who is either a fabulist or an idiot, and the worst man you’ve ever met.

Nathan Fielder co-directs Everything with Lance Oppenheim, with Fielder taking an on-camera position as he does in his other works like Nathan For You and The Rehearsal. One month before Elizabeth Holmes—Liz—is scheduled to turn herself in to serve a federal prison sentence in Texas, Fielder moves into her guest house. Liz is convicted, but she is also now married and the mother of two young children. Her husband is Billy Evans, a wealthy hotel heir from San Diego. Truth is under fire throughout Everything, but here is one unmitigated fact: Billy Evans sucks.

Fielder at first seems frustrated by Liz, who will not admit she did anything wrong. Post conviction and awaiting prison, Liz basically has three choices: she can admit it was all fraud from the beginning, she can admit she started with good intentions then committed to a lie when her original idea failed, or she is a f-cking idiot who cannot perceive the difference between theory and practice. Liz has no interest in option one or two.

Fielder picks at Liz’s almost frightening level of conviction with superhuman patience. Long past the point most people would simply throw a bucket of water on Liz for being the most annoying person alive, Fielder keeps pressing, keeps trying to get her to admit something, anything. But she doesn’t. What emerges is an alternate reality, one in which her intentions with Theranos’s “one drop” blood testing machine was real because someday the technology could work. That it does not work now, that it endangered people now, doesn’t matter because it could work. Liz lives in a world in which theory is practice is reality is truth. It’s infuriating but also fascinating.

It also means Liz simply cannot acknowledge any kind of truth lest she break and be forced to admit her own fraud. Fielder shows her Abbott and Costell’s legendary comedy routine “Who’s On First” and tries to get her to explain the joke and what comes out is Jackson Pollock-level word salad totally divorced from any meaning. Liz simply cannot acknowledge any reality but her own. She is living in a completely different world from the rest of us, entrenched in her lie and not backing down. That, or she’s a f-cking idiot with the perception of a hamster.

But worse is Billy Evans, Liz’s husband. Over the course of the three-hour film, Evans emerges as, arguably, its real protagonist. Once Liz is incarcerated, Evans becomes her mouthpiece, speaking for Liz in a way that Fielder objects to as not authentic to the Liz he met. Fielder seems to develop a little bit of a crush on Holmes, at least in the way that she challenges and irritates him, but he cannot hide his utter disdain for Evans. If documentarians are supposed to be objective, Fielder certainly is not (staying behind the camera, Oppenheim is less of a distinct mark on the film).

But this in itself becomes part of the fabric of Everything. Liz has constructed a reality for herself where she can live without admitting fault. The television series The Dropout constructs another version of Liz—one the real (“real”) Liz thinks is leading to worse treatment in prison, as the guards accept the TV show as reality—Evans constructs yet another version of his wife when she cannot speak for herself, and Fielder and Oppenheim are constructing still another version of Liz for their documentary. It’s a Matryoshka doll of perception and reality.

But what is real when everyone is telling a slightly different story? When Liz herself is committed to living in total performance art of innocence? Fielder seems totally flummoxed by Liz’s inability, or unwillingness, to separate theory from practice. How are they supposed to get at any kind of truth when Liz has simply moved to an alternate reality? Should we just throw up our hands and accept that she’s a baby-brained moron who can’t tell “concept” from “proof”? Or should we keep pressing on the bruise of the terrible trap she’s put herself in until she finally snaps and admits she is not, in fact, a moron but that she did it all knowingly?

There’s really no answer except that Billy Evans is terrible and Elizabeth Holmes’ life seems completely miserable. Even leaving aside the prison sentence, she’s tied herself to a despicable man and she’s boxed herself into a version of herself where she is either incredibly stupid or the liar everyone else thinks she is.

You Can See Everything never solves the puzzle of Elizabeth Holmes, in part because she is simply too opaque, too committed to the bit to drop her guard for even one second, and then later because Evans takes over constructing her image for the world, which is an even worse version of “Liz” than the one Holmes made for herself. Ultimately, there is no “truth”. What you perceive becomes your truth, but how are we supposed to live when everyone is perceiving something different?

You Can See Everything is now playing exclusively in theaters.