A great mind-bending 'documentary'

   You Can See Everything focuses on Elizabeth Holmes, the former head of Theranos, a company that claimed to have developed a revolutionary miniature blood-testing device. 

    Things didn't go well. In 2022, Holmes was found guilty of four counts of investor fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and three counts of wire fraud. She was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison, and, along with the company's former president, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani,* was ordered to pay $452 million in restitution.

   From this you might expect You Can See Everything, a documentary directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, to chart the history of a fraud, detailing its intricacies and twists as if it were a 60 Minutes report.

  Fortunately, Fielder and Oppenheimer take a different route. I say fortunately because You Can See Everything qualifies as one of the year's most engaging films, a movie that puts us through mental gymnastics involving truth and the difficulties of telling it.

  Forget the movie's two-hour-and-54 minute running time. You Can See Everything commands interest  throughout what amounts to two related sections, one during the 34 days before Holmes reported to Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, and the other two years later.

  The less said about part II, the better. When you see the movie, you'll know why this is a case where knowing less before viewing is the right choice.

  The movie begins at a rented San Diego beach home shared by Holmes, her partner Billy Evans, and their two children, one an infant and the other a toddler. Why did Holmes agree to be filmed in what Evans calls an act of “radical transparency?” That's part of the ongoing mystery.

 Eventually, Fielder moved in with the couple, becoming a 24-hour presence who sometimes seems to be lurking about. Fielder and Oppenheimer so convincingly create the film's insularity that we're absorbed in it. 

   If you’re familiar with Fielder’s work in HBO’s The Rehearsal, you know that Fielder, who blurs the line between comedy and acting,  is too creative to deliver a straightforward account of Holmes’s fall from the heights of tech glory.

   If I tell you that at one point, Fielder shows Holmes a clip of the famous Abbot and Costello Who’s On First routine to coax her into saying something about language, miscommunication, and truth, you’ll appreciate Fielder’s approach.

   Early on, Fielder and Oppenheim, the director of the recent Primetime, use extreme close-ups that allow us to stare at Holmes’s face, as if it were a map to read for clues. She claims innocence. She says she never lies. She says she doesn't care about money. She offers open-faced responses to Fielder, whose deadpan demeanor plays against questions that try to pry away at Holmes.

   Fielder and Holmes make an odd but intriguing combination. with Evans interpreting her “genius’ for Fielder and for us. Is he a reliable source? Is Holmes sincere when she says that she misled no one, or is she trying to create an image of a woman wrongly accused?

   At one point, Holmes stands at the kitchen sink beating eggs, one of those casual doc moments from ordinary life. Without asking her, Evans takes over the job, providing a telling clue about which no more can be said.

    Once Holmes can no longer appear on camera, Fielder’s creativity takes over, and the movie tosses us into a rabbit hole of shifting impressions and suspenseful revelations, skillfully asking us to unravel its title. Have we seen "everything," or does this "radically" immersive bit of moviemaking leave us to weigh big and small questions that will stimulate many post-movie conversations?

     Sometimes, it's good to get your mind bent, especially by a movie that's willing to live in a world where it's difficult to tell who's acting for the camera, who's being candid, and who even knows the difference. 

*The film makes reference to Balwani, who had a 12-year romantic relationship with Holmes, but Holmes remains the film's focus.