The trailer for You Can See Everything shows the disgraced Theranos founder facing pointed questions from Fielder in the weeks before she reported to prison.
A24 put out the first full trailer for You Can See Everything on Wednesday, and it's exactly as uncomfortable as everyone hoped. The documentary follows Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim as they get access to Elizabeth Holmes, the convicted Theranos founder, in the 34 days before she reported to federal prison. Fielder didn't just interview her. He moved in.
The footage was shot in secret over three years, according to The Hindu, which is its own small miracle given how much attention Holmes still draws. The film had its first public airing as a surprise screening at Telluride earlier this month, and it opens in American theatres on October 16. A New York premiere follows at the 64th New York Film Festival on September 30.
What's in the trailer does the heavy lifting here. Fielder asks Holmes directly, "You really feel you did nothing wrong?" Her answer: "I did not." He pushes further, asking how she ended up where she is. "I wish I knew, you know? I don't know. I don't feel like I understand that," she says. It's the kind of exchange that could read as contrition or as deflection, and the trailer doesn't tell you which.
Fielder's access goes well beyond one sit-down. He's shown living inside the house Holmes shares with her partner, Billy Evans, and their kids, with conversations about her conviction, her marriage and what's left of Theranos folded into the everyday footage. He also turns the questions on Evans, asking whether he was ever afraid of being scammed given the gap in family wealth between them. Evans's answer, that there are different levels of wealth, doesn't exactly settle it.
Holmes tells Fielder at one point that she has "nothing to hide." Later she talks about how hard it is for her to let people see her cry, and the trailer closes on a single tear. Whether that moment is observed or staged is left hanging, and that's the whole point of Fielder and Oppenheim's approach. The New York Film Festival has described the film as one built to blur documentary and fiction on purpose.
This is Fielder's first feature as a director, stretching the same instincts that ran through Nathan for You and The Rehearsal into a 174-minute film. Oppenheim brings his own track record here, having made Some Kind of Heaven and Primetime, the Robert Pattinson drama about Chris Hansen. According to the LA Times, the film is already drawing Oscar chatter, with some prognosticators floating it as a possible best picture contender, which would be unusual territory for a documentary at that level.
The filmmakers are also sitting on at least one reveal. An unnamed A-list actress appears somewhere in the film, and neither A24 nor the directors have said who it is. That answer, like most things around this project, will have to wait for October 16.
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