“You Can See Everything” is a Deranged Cinematic Experience (Movie Review)

If you’re unfamiliar with Nathan Fielder as an artist, I suggest remedying that as quickly as possible. Over the past thirteen years, Fielder has evolved from the face of Comedy Central’s Nathan for You into a far more enigmatic, nuanced, and meticulous filmmaker. He followed that series with HBO’s The Rehearsal, whose two seasons have provided increasingly ludicrous and existentially thought-provoking territory for his distinctive voice as a writer, director, and actor. Between seasons, he also teamed up with Benny Safdie and Emma Stone for The Curse, an unsettling dramedy series.

What remains so fascinating about Fielder is how organically his work has expanded and evolved. Revisiting his early material reveals the roots of themes that continue to run through his later projects—the fixations that make him both a transfixed observer and a transfixing cinematic artist.

His new documentary, You Can See Everything, feels in many ways like a culmination of that body of work. Co-directed by Primetime filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, the film has attracted attention for its focus on Elizabeth Holmes, the former Theranos CEO convicted of fraud. But, as with much of Fielder’s work, it becomes just as revealing of its creator as its purported subject, unfolding into a rumination on communication, subjugation, and performance as a way of existing in the modern age.

TOP FIVE THINGS ABOUT “YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING”

5. The Score

This may be a strange place to start, but Ari Balouzian’s score contributes so much to the tone, energy, and emotional impact of You Can See Everything that it deserves immediate attention. I recently sang his praises in my review of Oppenheim’s Primetime, where he blended classical orchestration with a distinctly off-kilter sensibility to create one of the most enthralling scores I’d heard this year. Somehow, his work here surpasses it.

Balouzian’s music feels fundamental to the film’s success. At times, he works within a similar musical framework, just as Oppenheim and cinematographer David Bolen carry over elements of their visual approach. But those familiar foundations give way to some striking differences. Unconventional, occasionally invasive sound design intertwines with dissonant musical textures, creating a soundscape that feels difficult to separate into its individual parts. The result is as unsettling as it is enthralling.

4. The Structure and Editing

It’s difficult to describe how You Can See Everything unfolds over its three-hour runtime, but unfolds feels like exactly the right word. What begins as a fairly conventional documentary quickly veers into unfamiliar territory, first with comically fascinating results, then with increasingly unsettling existential implications.

That constantly evolving structure has become a defining feature of Fielder’s recent work. Few shows use each minute as meaningfully and judiciously as The Rehearsal, which regularly fits dozens of ideas into an episode without sacrificing their resonance or impact. Bringing frequent Rehearsal editor Adam Locke-Norton onto this film proves an inspired choice. His editing sensibilities complement the larger visual approach, while his work with Fielder and Oppenheim gives the film a structure that feels both enthralling and transcendent.

By the second half, the layers of metatext become almost staggering. The film keeps finding new ways to complicate our understanding of what we’re watching, reaching a level of experimentation that brings William Greaves’ landmark 1968 documentary Symbiopsychotaxiplasm to mind. It’s an extraordinary thing to behold.

3. The Performances

How do you quantify a “performance” in a documentary setting? Not only is that a valid question with which I am grappling in the writing of this review, but it is also one that You Can See Everything is actively grappling with in the context of the film itself. By choosing to shoot so many of the conversations between people in the film in these extremely precise close-ups, the filmmakers give you endless amounts of time to really examine and excavate the most minute responses from the on-screen subjects. This includes Holmes, a notorious convicted liar, and obviously, putting her under the literal microscope through the directorial choices here in such a direct fashion is extremely fitting for the larger narrative that surrounds her. But it also includes Fielder.

Fielder has become a really fascinating on-screen presence over the years, escalating from someone whose discomfort with being on camera was part of the gag to something far more interesting and difficult to get a firm grasp on. In the opening act of You Can See Everything, there is something so incredibly funny about cutting to Fielder lurking around various corners of Holmes and her family’s home, milking his out-of-place appearance in a fashion similar to The Rehearsal. But what Fielder brings to this documentary form is a unique kind of brutal honesty: his responses to Holmes are direct and unguarded in a way that furthers the interests of the piece in fascinating ways. This, of course, all comes home to roost in the film’s final act in some frankly devastating ways.

The last performance I must mention is a spoiler, so be warned…

Amanda Seyfried (who played Holmes in the Hulu series The Dropout) shows up at a key point in the film and is nothing short of absolutely astonishing. She is both herself and a performer portraying a certain character at various points throughout the film, and watching these alternating sides of her is nothing short of utterly captivating.

2. The Visual Language

I’ve already spoken a lot about the ingenuity of Fielder and Oppenheim’s direction, Bolen’s cinematography, and Locke-Norton’s editing. But the way the film balances maximizing effective documentary coverage with artistic intent through its contrasting ultra-wide angles and claustrophobia-inducing close-ups is just insane.

Not only does this work wonders for the film on a visual level and make You Can See Everything feel dissimilar to other modern documentaries, but it also foregrounds some of the film’s most pressing themes. There’s a key moment around the midpoint in which paparazzi and news teams film Holmes from a great distance using cameras with obscenely long lenses. The film makes a meal out of capturing this and, in doing so, reveals a key part of its own construction: You Can See Everything is what happens when the media-based tools that have been trained to view Holmes from a distance are allowed to get up close and personal with her in the most literal of ways.

1. The Final Shot

I am not going to spoil the final shot of the film. But when it played out onscreen, it seemed to mean one thing to me. Then, as I drove home and thought about it more and more, it seemed to take on a different meaning. This morning, I woke up with yet another conclusion about what the image meant. I say this to say: it’s a perfect final image for the film. It reminded me so much of the way Charlie Chaplin used to end films such as City Lights or Modern Times, with a single image so full of meaning that you could feel the entire film building toward this didactic and multifaceted visual.

Rare is the day that I even see anyone attempt such a thing in modern filmmaking, but Fielder and Oppenheim do so and pull it off in spades with You Can See Everything. A truly insane accomplishment.

RGM GRADE

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As a longtime fan of Nathan Fielder, seeing You Can See Everything on the big screen with a sold-out auditorium full of people was a surreal experience. It is his greatest work to date and seems all but certain to be remembered as one of the defining cinematic works of the era in which we are living.

By taking a subject as controversial and inherently charged as Elizabeth Holmes, Fielder and co-director Lance Oppenheim find a starting point rich with friction. They use that tension to fuel an exploration of perception, reality, and the performances through which people attempt to make themselves understood.

What makes the experience so extraordinary is how consistently the film challenges the way you’re watching it. Every shift in perspective seems to reveal another layer, complicating ideas that initially appeared straightforward. Its ambition never feels separate from its emotional impact; the two keep deepening each other.

Watching it with an audience made that progression even more remarkable. There was something surreal about sharing a room with people while the film kept changing beneath our feet.

And then it ended, leaving me with an image I couldn’t stop reconsidering. You Can See Everything achieves something I can barely articulate without diminishing it. I left overwhelmed, and the feeling has only grown.

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