Cinemaura
6 days ago
Every few years a movie comes along that everyone suddenly wants to talk about, and this weekend it is a documentary. "You Can See Everything" opened at number two at the box office in only 855 theaters, with lines outside cinemas and more than two thousand sold-out showings. For a documentary that runs almost three hours, that tells you something about how curious we all still are about Elizabeth Holmes.
Most of us know the story. Holmes founded Theranos, the blood-testing company that promised to change medicine, and it all fell apart. She was convicted of defrauding investors and sentenced in 2022 to more than eleven years in prison. The surprise is what happened before she went in. She invited a small film crew, led by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, into the San Diego home she shared with her partner Billy Evans, the father of her two children, and told them, more or less, that they could see everything. The film was shot in complete secret, starting in 2023, and it took three years to finish. Nobody even knew it existed until it was revealed as a mystery screening at the Telluride Film Festival.
What fascinated me is the idea at the center of it. Here is a woman whose name became another word for lying, and now she opens her kitchen, her family and her days to a camera. Can you ever really see a person, even when they let you look? Fielder, with his famous straight face, keeps asking the awkward questions that most of us would be too polite to ask, and the line between the people filming and the people being filmed gets blurry in a way that keeps you watching.
I also have to be honest. This is not a classic documentary with experts and timelines, and it is not a light evening. It is long, it is uncomfortable, and at times it feels more like a strange reality show than a film. Critics have been almost unanimous in their praise, and many of them say it is best to go in knowing as little as possible, because the story picks up two years later with turns they refuse to spoil. I will respect that too.
The lesson I took from it is about the stories we tell about ourselves. All of us, in small ways, polish our image a little for the people around us, at work, online, even at the family table. This film shows what happens when the image becomes bigger than the truth, and how hard it is to find your way back. It made me think about how important it is to raise our children to be honest first, and impressive second.
The film is rated R, so it is for grown-ups. If you like true stories, real people and the kind of movie you argue about all the way home, this is the one everybody is talking about right now. Go with a friend or your partner, get a big coffee, and plan a long conversation afterward.
