You Can See Everything review

I went into You Can See Everything knowing relatively little about Elizabeth Holmes beyond the headlines. I hadn’t watched The Dropout, and I wasn’t particularly invested in the case. I came out of this nearly three-hour movie wondering whether she might actually believe what she’s saying. My friends thought I’d been taken in. We had a fairly extensive argument about it afterward, which is part of why I liked this so much.

Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim follow Holmes and her family in the weeks before she reports to prison. What interested me was the possibility that she’s more credulous than calculating: someone who believes what people tell her and then believes the things coming out of her own mouth, despite evidence to the contrary. That doesn’t mean nothing bad happened. It means I came away questioning her intent in a way I hadn’t going in. Based on what this movie showed me, I would have had reasonable doubt.

I also found her relationship with Billy Evans troubling. He came across as controlling, repeatedly speaking for her and managing the situation around her. My friends saw a coordinated effort to rehabilitate her image. I could see why they thought that, but I also thought the behavior we were watching supported the possibility that she’s spent much of her life being directed by other people. I didn’t find that explanation nearly as easy to dismiss as they did.

Fielder himself seems to get caught up in her charms. I don’t think he went into this intending to absolve her, but I do think his attachment complicates what he’s doing. By the end, I was ready to agree that Nathan had been compromised. That doesn’t settle whether Holmes is telling the truth. It does make the relationship between filmmaker and subject considerably more interesting.

The biggest problem is the length. This needed thirty to forty-five minutes cut. I was tired going into the theater, and by the time Amanda Seyfried arrived, I was about done. Then she comes in like a breath of fresh air and takes over the movie. I love Amanda Seyfried, and her involvement makes the project work for me. It gives the film somewhere to go after that extended first section. We just needed her about twenty-five minutes earlier.

Her presence also raises something I found uncomfortable: the difference between a person and a dramatized version of that person. Whatever Holmes did, the idea of being in prison with people who hate you partly because of a television portrayal would suck. I hadn’t seen Seyfried’s performance in The Dropout, so I couldn’t assess the whole portrayal, but I understood Holmes’s objection to having somebody else’s version of her treated as the real thing.

I’m generally skeptical of the power federal prosecutors have over the people they charge, so I’m probably more receptive to gaps in the accepted story than some viewers will be. That isn’t me declaring her innocent. It means this movie made me consider possibilities I hadn’t considered before. My friends watched the same footage and became more convinced she was manipulating everyone. I understood their argument. I just didn’t come away as certain.

I really, really liked this. I initially gave it four stars, then moved it to four and a half because I kept thinking about it. Four and a quarter would probably be right if Letterboxd allowed it. It’s too long, but it gave us plenty to argue about, and it stayed with me afterward. That earns some extra weight.