Nathan Fielder’s phantasmagorical new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, You Can See Everything, is a tale of two quasi-charlatans. One is a comedy genius, who has used his powers of nonsense subterfuge to save struggling businesses and improve the airline industry via the wisdom of Evanescence lyrics. The other is a convict, who is currently sitting in a prison cell – wide-eyed and unusual – for defrauding investors in her doomed blood-testing company Theranos.
Watching them in the breathtaking You Can See Everything is like witnessing two profoundly odd con artists play mind games with one another – neither wants to blink first, otherwise their respective house of cards will fall down. The film, directed by Fielder and the suddenly ubiquitous Lance Oppenheim – whose other new movie, the Robert Pattinson starrer Primetime, is a second tale of notorious public kooks tussling with the truth – is awash in outrageous tonal shifts and plot twists, and plays at its best when you have absolutely no idea where it’ll go next. And never is that more true than in the actions of its surprise guest star, who arrives 90 minutes into the two-and-a-half-hour-long You Can See Everything like an electrical jolt. This person – who has been entirely absent from the film’s marketing – delivers one of the most thrilling, fascinating and potentially history-making performances of the year. Well, “performance” in a sense.
