When disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes reached out to A24 shortly before reporting to prison in 2023, she likely imagined a sympathetic portrait that would finally exonerate her in the eyes of the public. Instead, she found herself under the gaze of Nathan Fielder, a comedic provocateur known for blurring the lines between authenticity and performance. In the resulting film, You Can See Everything, these two masters of artifice meet in a psychological stalemate, each operating within a carefully curated persona that leaves observers wondering where the act ends and the person begins.
Throughout their interactions, Fielder probes Holmes with his signature deadpan curiosity, gently questioning how both of them ended up associated with high-profile business scams. While Holmes insists her situation was entirely different and maintains her innocence despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Fielder treats the absurdity of her denial as part of a larger game. The tension peaks during scenes where Holmes watches Amanda Seyfried play her in The Dropout; in a dizzying layer of meta-commentary, Seyfried later reviews footage of the real Holmes reacting to Seyfried’s fictionalized version of her.
The surrealism extends beyond Holmes herself to include her husband, Billy Evans, who introduces an AI avatar of his wife into their family dinners via a giant vertical screen. As Evans fights desperate battles over minor misquotes in press profiles and refuses to provide proof for his claims, he takes on a persona that feels almost intentionally villainous. It creates a strange dynamic where the viewer might find themselves pitying Holmes simply because her surroundings have become so grotesquely artificial.
By the time Holmes enters federal custody, Fielder is left grappling with how to translate their encounter into cinema. Since he cannot record her in prison, he attempts to reconstruct their conversations through scripts and reenactments featuring Seyfried once again. The film ultimately becomes less about whether Holmes lied about her technology and more about the nature of identity itself, suggesting that for people like Fielder and Holmes, life is simply a series of roles played until there is nothing left underneath but another mask.
