At nearly three hours in length, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s You Can See Everything is a staggering, unnerving documentary about Silicon Valley and whether you can truly know someone. Its focus is Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who granted the filmmakers unprecedented access for about a month before her prison stint began in 2023. However, the movie is as much about the question of Holmes’ culpability as it is about cults of personality and cultural mythologies at large — not to mention Fielder’s own oeuvre and TV persona as the creator of shows like The Rehearsal, a prankish work of obsession laced with hidden sincerity.

The total here feels greater than the sum of its parts, owing to the allure of its eerie filmmaking and the sheer brain-breaking scope of its ambition as a work of haunting, self-reflexive cinema. Filled with suffocating 4:3 close-ups shot with long lenses, and awash in shadow to disguise motive, the movie’s rapturous form feels like the product of invasive surveillance amidst a mile-a-minute chase. This is despite the fact that most of it is composed of simple, static conversations — a magnificent sleight of hand.

It initially unfolds at a beachside home in San Diego rented by Holmes and her husband, the wild-eyed hotel heir Billy Evans, a man seen voraciously absorbing audio material at double speed. We’re reintroduced to Holmes’ story by way of news clips scoring footage of her daily life, a sort of “previously on” segment detailing her conviction for fraud.

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