Nathan Fielder’s movie on Elizabeth Holmes absolutely lives up to the hype

About a third of the way through “You Can See Everything,” Nathan Fielder’s new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes , we watch the disgraced Theranos founder and convicted fraudster pose for the camera — more than 200 of them, to be exact.

In the days before she reported to federal prison in 2023, Holmes had her likeness captured and scanned so she can be reproduced via video, hologram and artificial intelligence while she’s locked up. It’s partly a business decision — she and partner William “Billy” Evans, with whom she shares two children, are launching a new healthcare startup (which they refer to as Theranos 2.0), and it might be useful to have access to a version of Holmes that can be programmed, say, to give pitches. And yet, we see Holmes crying. She’s been hurt before by putting her image too far out into the public. “I have a weird history with being on camera,” she says, sobbing.

Thanks to “You Can See Everything,” that history is only getting weirder.

The pre-release buzz around this new movie, which was made in secret and revealed via a surprise trailer that dropped last month, has been near deafening. Some of the critics who had been privy to its secrets have boldly declared it “the movie of the year” or wondered whether it might even become the first documentary to receive an Oscar nomination for best picture. With the film opening in theaters across the US on Friday, audiences now have their turn to see what all the fuss is about.

Fielder’s movie is a wholly unique and revolutionary one. Thanks to the unparalleled access to Holmes and her family in the days before her incarceration (at one point we even see Evans showering nude), as well as some truly jaw-dropping creative decisions later in the movie, the film is gripping and shocking. It is a bold, perhaps impossible, quest for truth about someone whom Fielder compares to a magician. At one point, he wonders if she may just be the most manipulative person who has ever lived.

Rarely, if ever, has a documentarian and subject been so perfectly matched. Through his shows “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal,” Fielder has established himself as someone pathologically obsessed with elaborate schemes, awkwardness, meta narratives and things that are not what they first appear. In these programs, Fielder plays both the straight man and the chaos agent, often appearing like an alien in human disguise sent to study our most inexplicable behavior, even if it means meddling in things himself.

If Fielder is again playing a version of himself here, Holmes seems to be offering near infinite versions of herself up for examination, like a set of unblinking reflections in a hall of funhouse mirrors. As the movie progresses, Fielder and the audience must question whether and how they’re being deceived. Is Holmes just weird, as Evans, her partner, insists? A victim of the men in her life, as her father seems to believe? Someone who may be on the spectrum and incapable of understanding how others perceive her words, as a revelatory sequence involving Holmes’ reaction to the Abbott and Costello “Who’s On First” sketch seems to suggest? Or is she just a compulsive liar who has somehow managed to delude even herself?

Elizabeth Holmes, the former founder of Theranos, has been approved to move to a halfway house in 2027, according to ABC News. Holmes was originally sentenced to more than 11 years in prison in 2022, after being convicted of defrauding investors while running her failed blood testing startup. This comes as Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder prepare to drop their documentary on Holmes in the coming weeks.

“The world believes a reality about me that isn’t true. So what is the reality?” Holmes says in the movie. It’s a question that hovers over the entire production and one that isn’t easily answered.

Co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, who released “ Primetime ” also under the A24 banner last month, “You Can See Everything” is somehow visually gorgeous and yet profoundly ugly — almost intentionally so. Much of it is filmed in extreme close-up, replete with zits, wrinkles and sweat on Fielder and Holmes, as if we’re studying them under a microscope. As befitting Fielder’s style for leaning into artifice, we often see the crew and their boom mics, as they work to create something that ultimately mixes reality and recreation, fact and fiction.

Here’s what Elizabeth Holmes told Dr. Sanjay Gupta in 2016

A surprise person appears halfway through the movie — one being kept a closely guarded secret from audiences and which we won’t spoil here — but whose presence transforms it entirely, emerging as both co-documentarian and co-subject. “We’re working in Fiction Land,” this person astutely observes at one point. That feels like an understatement.

Fielder is a refreshingly candid guide through this strange land. He’s open about his insecurities as to why Holmes wanted him to capture her — does his lack of scientific understanding mean he’ll be an easy mark? — and the movie offers the case that he may have grown too close to or fond of his subject. When one person remarks that Holmes may be a victim of Stockholm Syndrome under Evans, viewers can only wonder if the same can be said for Fielder and Holmes.

When Holmes does eventually report to federal prison in Texas, she does so after Fielder injects his trademark cringe into her last moments of freedom, suggesting he leave Holmes and Evans alone so they can have sex — then asking how it was — and offering her a gag gift in front of her parents of hair dye and sunglasses so that she can go on the run. Then, as she prepares to get into the car to leave Fielder, they embrace and stare awkwardly at one another until we finally hear the words, “You’ve got this.”

But it’s not Fielder who says this to Holmes in a bid to lift her spirits. It’s she who is encouraging him , as if she knows the Herculean task he has ahead of him in trying to make sense of her. It’s a stunning reversal of roles to capture on camera, but also feels entirely appropriate for a film that has rewritten the rules of documentaries as we know them.

在内森·菲尔德关于伊丽莎白·霍姆斯的新纪录片《你可以看到一切》大约三分之一处，我们看到这位声名狼藉的 Theranos 创始人兼被定罪的诈骗犯对着镜头摆姿势——确切地说，是 200 多张照片。

在2023年入狱服刑前，霍姆斯接受了肖像扫描，以便在狱中可以通过视频、全息投影和人工智能技术“复制”她的影像。这部分是出于商业考量——她和伴侣威廉·“比利”·埃文斯（两人育有两个孩子）正在筹备一家新的医疗保健初创公司（他们称之为Theranos 2.0），而拥有一个可以被编程的“霍姆斯”影像或许会很有帮助，比如用来做项目推介。然而，我们看到霍姆斯在哭泣。她之前就因为过度曝光自己的形象而受到伤害。“我跟镜头之间有着一段不太愉快的经历，”她抽泣着说。

多亏了《你可以看到一切》，这段历史只会变得越来越离奇。

这部秘密制作、上个月突然发布预告片的新电影，在上映前就引起了广泛关注，几乎震耳欲聋。一些事先了解内情的影评人大胆宣称它是“年度最佳影片”，甚至有人猜测它有可能成为首部获得奥斯卡最佳影片提名的纪录片。随着影片于本周五在美国各大影院上映，观众们终于有机会一睹这部备受瞩目的作品究竟有何魅力。

菲尔德的这部电影独树一帜，堪称革命性之作。得益于他获得了前所未有的机会，得以在霍姆斯入狱前与她及其家人接触（影片中甚至出现了埃文斯裸体淋浴的镜头），再加上影片后半段一些令人瞠目结舌的创意，使得这部电影扣人心弦，震撼人心。这是一场大胆的、或许是不可能完成的真相探寻之旅，菲尔德将霍姆斯比作魔术师。影片中，他甚至一度怀疑，她会不会是史上最具操控性的人。

纪录片导演和拍摄对象如此契合的情况实属罕见。菲尔德凭借《内森为你》（Nathan for You）和《排练》（The Rehearsal）等节目，确立了自己对精心策划的阴谋、尴尬场面、元叙事以及表象与真相之间微妙联系的病态痴迷。在这些节目中，菲尔德既扮演着正经人的角色，又扮演着制造混乱的始作俑者，他常常像一个伪装成人类的外星人，被派来研究我们最难以解释的行为，即便这意味着他自己也要插手干预。

如果菲尔德在这里再次扮演的是他自己，那么霍姆斯似乎在向世人展示近乎无限个版本的自己，如同哈哈镜大厅里一排排不眨眼的倒影。随着电影的推进，菲尔德和观众都必须质疑自己是否以及如何被蒙蔽。霍姆斯真的像她的搭档埃文斯所坚持的那样，只是个怪人吗？她真的像她父亲似乎认为的那样，是她生命中那些男人的受害者吗？她真的像霍姆斯对阿伯特和科斯特洛的“谁是第一”小品的反应所暗示的那样，可能患有自闭症，无法理解别人是如何看待她的话语吗？或者，她只是一个连自己都骗过的惯性说谎者？

据美国广播公司新闻报道，Theranos公司前创始人伊丽莎白·霍姆斯已获准于2027年入住过渡性住所。霍姆斯于2022年被判处11年以上监禁，罪名是经营其失败的血液检测初创公司期间诈骗投资者。与此同时，兰斯·奥本海姆和内森·菲尔德正准备在未来几周内发布他们关于霍姆斯的纪录片。

“世人对我的认知并非事实。那么，真相究竟是什么？”福尔摩斯在电影中如是说。这个问题贯穿整部影片，却也难以轻易解答。

由菲尔德和兰斯·奥本海姆联合执导的《你能看到一切》（上个月他们也以A24的名义发行了《黄金时段》），在视觉上美轮美奂，却又丑陋得令人作呕——几乎是刻意为之。影片大量采用特写镜头，菲尔德和霍姆斯脸上的痘痘、皱纹和汗水清晰可见，仿佛我们正在用显微镜观察他们。菲尔德一贯喜欢运用人为的技巧，因此我们经常能看到剧组人员和他们的吊杆麦克风，他们努力创作，最终呈现出一种融合了现实与虚构、事实与虚构的作品。

以下是伊丽莎白·霍姆斯在2016年告诉桑杰·古普塔医生的话

影片进行到一半时，一个神秘人物突然出现——此人身份一直被严密保密，我们在此不剧透——但他的出现彻底改变了整部影片，他既是联合纪录片导演，也是影片的共同主角。“我们是在虚构的世界里工作，”此人曾一针见血地指出。这似乎还不足以概括影片的精髓。

菲尔德是一位坦诚率真的向导，带领我们探索这片奇异的土地。他毫不掩饰自己的不安，不明白霍姆斯为何要他抓捕她——难道是因为缺乏科学知识，他很容易成为猎物？——影片也暗示，他或许已经与霍姆斯走得太近，甚至产生了感情。当有人说霍姆斯在埃文斯的操控下可能患上了斯德哥尔摩综合症时，观众不禁会想，菲尔德和霍姆斯是否也存在同样的问题。

霍姆斯最终还是去了德克萨斯州的联邦监狱报到。此前，菲尔德在她即将失去自由的最后时刻，用他标志性的尴尬举动让她难堪。他建议霍姆斯和埃文斯单独待一会儿，好让他们俩发生性关系——然后问她感觉如何——并在她父母面前送给她一副染发剂和太阳镜，让她可以趁机逃跑。之后，当她准备上车离开菲尔德时，两人拥抱在一起，尴尬地对视着，直到我们终于听到那句“你能行的”。

但并非菲尔德为了安慰霍姆斯而对她说了这番话，而是霍姆斯在鼓励他，仿佛她深知他即将面临的艰巨任务——理解她。这种角色互换在镜头前呈现出来令人惊叹，但对于一部改写纪录片规则的影片而言，却又显得恰如其分。