Has any nearly three-hour-long, non-superhero, and—let’s be honest—kind of weird movie ever generated as much buzz as Nathan Fielder’s You Can See Everything, the new film about Elizabeth Holmes, the central figure in the Theranos scandal? In my neighborhood, interest was so high, every showing at the local theater was sold out the first weekend. Even the 10:45 AM.
As someone who’s obsessively followed Holmes and Theranos for more than a decade—the initial investigation by John Carreyrou, the Wall Street Journal reporter who broke the story; his subsequent, riveting book, Bad Blood; his podcast about Holmes’s criminal trial; the other podcast that became the Hulu show; all of it—I naturally raced to see this latest addition to the story. And what a story it is.
People are debating whether You Can See Everything is a “true” documentary. Wherever you come down on that question, the movie is mesmerizing, a 174-minute portrayal of …. something. But what? It’s not a full or even partial retelling of the Theranos scandal, which is only referred to in the broadest of terms. It’s not a traditional profile of Holmes since her partner Billy Evans seems to have as much screen time as her. And it’s not a “behind-the-scenes” view of their “real” lives even within the film’s initial constraints, the 34 days before Holmes began serving her prison sentence. What true behind-the-scenes documentary includes so many formal interviews and a mother who never speaks on camera?
Some critical things viewers hear little or nothing about:
People Were Put at Risk
The movie refers to fraud against investors, as if nameless, faceless money men were the only ones injured by Holmes and her romantic/business partner at Theranos, Sunny Balwani. But it’s impossible to assess Holmes’s version of events without knowing the facts of the case, which were extensively documented (here’s a link to the Wall Street Journal’s convenient roundup of articles) and resulted in two successful criminal convictions. Holmes and Balwani weren’t selling a new app to make your computer work better; they were promoting new blood analysis technology that could be used—and was, in at least 40 Walgreens stores in Arizona—by actual patients for important medical tests. Investors not only lost millions of dollars; lives were put at risk. Men received incorrect blood test results showing elevated PSA levels, which would be a sign of prostate cancer. Pregnant women received erroneous HCG results. With patients relying on the accuracy of Theranos’s technology, the lies told by Holmes and Balwani were dangerous and damaging. (Tried separately from Holmes, who claimed he abused her, Balwani received a longer sentence than her, 12 years and 11 months.)
The Coverup
Despite the billowy blond hair, wide-eyed demeanor and (apparently) transfixing gaze that Holmes presents to Fielder in the movie, she’s no soft touch. In a short piece like this, it would be impossible to convey the viciousness of her attacks on the whistleblowers and journalists who revealed her fraud. Read John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood to get the full story. (Seriously, read it. The book’s great.) In the meantime, I will just quote a portion of his recent post about Holmes’s conduct: “She went after Tyler Shultz and Erika Cheung with everything she had. I was threatened with litigation on a daily basis for months on end. It was a ruthless cover-up of a breathtaking fraud, and she was at the controls.”
False Impression of Rigor
At one point in the movie, Fielder asks Holmes and/or Evans why they are allowing him to film them in such proximity. I left the movie still wondering: why HIM? Someone described as a “cringe comedian” whose work “employs documentarian practices to humorous effect”?
In his review of the movie in the New York Times, John Carreyrou notes Holmes spoke to at least one other documentary filmmaker about a potential project in 2016. Maybe she couldn’t get anyone besides Fielder. Maybe he was Evans’s preference. Or maybe they thought Fielder’s superficially intense approach—the aggressive follow up questions and literal in-your-face interviewing style (I’ve never seen any other interviewer put their head so close to their subject’s)—would enhance the desired impression of complete transparency and mask how little meaningful information was being shared. Fielder mainly comes across like an odd guy, lurking in the background of many shots, unsure where to look when Holmes starts crying or breastfeeding her baby. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s unclear what, if anything, Fielder did to test the accuracy of what Holmes told him. For example, in one part of the movie [minor spoiler alert] Holmes displays and defends her “invention,” Theranos’s blood-analyzing machine. However, one of the whistleblowers in the case, Tyler Schultz, grandson of former Secretary of State George Schultz, who served on the Theranos board, has stated that the machine shown in the movie was NOT the machine he worked on at the company. Did Fielder or his co-director Lance Oppenheim bother to check?
(In an effort to avoid more spoilers, I won’t point out any other factual deficiencies in the movie, but if you’ve seen it already or don’t care, Carreyrou’s Times review mentions several inaccuracies, as does the Wall Street Journal’s summary.)
In You Can See Everything, Fielder expressly acknowledges he’s a fan of magic. But despite spending a lot of time questioning whether anyone can believe Holmes’s precise words (especially in connection with a particular interview she gave to the New York Times), he never seems to ask whether the film project itself is one elaborate misdirection. I had trouble getting past the threshold issue: who would agree to this? Thirty-four days before going to jail for what’s supposed to be more than a decade with two young children and elderly parents to worry about? Not just to cameras in the house all the time, but to Nathan Fielder moving in? Even if you don’t believe (as some do) that Holmes deliberately got pregnant with a second child after her conviction in a failed ploy for a reduced sentence, any nursing mother also parenting a toddler would be aware how many hours of those 34 days were going to be spent breastfeeding, changing diapers and otherwise caring for those children. Holmes knew what scenes her new housemate’s cameras were likely to capture, and they did. Not that she could keep up the madonna front entirely. I don’t think it gives too much away to say Holmes tried to minimize her intelligence throughout the movie; it didn’t fit with the image she wanted to convey. The pretense could only go so far, though, which became obvious when [again, minor spoiler alert] she used the word “annealed” to describe her relationship with Evans.
By all means, go see the movie. I enjoyed it. Sociopaths make for compelling viewing. But watch it knowing you’re getting an artistic version of reality TV—and all the verisimilitude and guilty pleasure that genre provides. Contrary to the title, you’re not seeing everything. In fact, between Fielder’s editorial choices and Holmes’s own scheming (with or without Billy Evans, whose disturbing, domineering personality makes him an easy villain for the film), you’re not seeing much at all. Like the master she is, Holmes gave Fielder and the audience the exact character she wanted: doting mother, docile partner, ambitious businesswoman. Because if nothing else, the movie is the dramatic start to the Elizabeth Holmes rehabilitation tour, the retelling of her story to sell to investors for the next stage of her new life. Another fact the movie fails to mention: pursuant to a retroactive modification to the sentencing guidelines, this coming August, a little more than 4 years after reporting to begin serving her sentence—originally 11 years and 3 months, later reduced to 10 years and 3 months—Holmes will be leaving prison and moving to a halfway house. Meanwhile, just a few weeks ago, Sunny Balwani, her partner at Theranos, had his final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court denied.