Gladly. I’m dying to talk about this. (I blurred major spoilers but some may consider more of this spoilery… you are so warned.)
I don’t know how familiar you are with Fielder’s work – I’ve only dabbled – but this is an (almost certainly) autistic man who has kind of made a living putting people on. He’s socially awkward but seems to play it up for laughs or to provoke a reaction - often you’re left questioning how much of what you saw was real. The one episode I saw of the Rehearsal impressed me as several layers deep from an artistic standpoint, and for me very relatable. So I think it’s important to understand who Fielder is going into this film. He is a guy who intentionally fucks with the audience.
The creepy trailer for You Can See Everything implies some kind of cat-and-mouse between Fielder and Holmes. You’ve got the guy who’s always putting people on vs. the liar and manipulative sociopath. And that’s what you go in expecting. And I suspect the filmmakers went into it too. Holmes and her fiance Billy Evans decide they are going to invite Fielder into their home to show the world who they really are, in the lead up to Holmes’ imprisonment, which is I believe 34 days from the start of the film. It appears that Holmes hasn’t a goddamned clue who Fielder is.
The whole thing gets weird very fast because Elizabeth Holmes, when pressed, can offer no counter-narrative to what occurred. She insists she’s innocent but she can’t provide an explanation for what actually happened. Billy Evans is trying to push a certain narrative onto Fielder, but Fielder isn’t biting, and Holmes has nothing. Trying not to spoil here, but… the film begins to question some foundational assumptions about who Holmes is and what’s actually going on, and then once Holmes is actually in prison, the focus of it shifts considerably when you learn that Billy Evans is a delusional, narcissistic, controlling, potentially dangerous asshole It is one wild fucking ride, one in which the viewer may be surprised by their own emotional reactions as the story unfolds.
True to form, there’s nothing this film doesn’t call into question. It calls into question whether Holmes is in fact lying and manipulative or something very different (but equally broken), whether or not she is aware of her fiance’s actions, whether Fielder has himself lost objectivity, whether objectivity is even possible in anything, whether truth is relative, whether love is real even when it’s a delusion, and how gender politics plays into all of this, including (which is not mentioned in the film) Holmes’ own legal defense that she was abused by her partner in crime. It confronts the ethical implications of Fielder’s creative choices and plays with ideas of ethics in journalism and whether violating those ethics is justified in pursuit of the truth. One supporting character experiences the cognitive dissonance between depicting someone as a character and then grappling with the reality of that person’s life. There are very few questions this documentary doesn’t raise, frankly. I stand by my assertion that it’s one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. I can tell you what I think is going on but it almost doesn’t matter. The inherent subjectivity is the point.
I was reading an article that mentioned the title of You Can See Everything could mean one of five different things, but I thought of a potential sixth meaning. One of the central “aha” moments of the film is when Fielder debates with Holmes about her understanding of the word can. He’s saying, look, you knew when you used the word can people would interpret it a certain way that is not the way that you meant. Holmes is baffled by his attempt to clarify.
Well, “can” is doing is a lot of heavy lifting in the title, too, I wager.