A24 has released the trailer for You Can See Everything, and the premise is the story. Thirty four days before she was due to report to federal prison for defrauding investors, Elizabeth Holmes invited a film crew into her life and told them to keep shooting. They did, for three years.
It is Nathan Fielder's first feature as a director, co-directed with Lance Oppenheim, and the pairing is the most telling thing about it. Fielder has spent his career building elaborate constructions to see what people will do inside them, and he has never once pretended the camera is a neutral object. Oppenheim makes documentaries about people performing versions of themselves. Holmes may be the most extreme available subject for both instincts.
It premiered at Telluride at the start of September as an unannounced screening, a rare way to launch a documentary and a fitting one for a film about controlled disclosure. A24 puts it in theaters on Friday, October 16.
A trailer is not a verdict, and this one has an obvious hazard attached to it. A film made with the cooperation of a convicted fraudster, who chose to invite the crew in, is by construction a film she wanted made. Whether the directors turn that into the subject or get absorbed by it is the entire question, and two minutes cannot answer it.
It runs a hundred and seventy four minutes, which is a long time to spend inside one person's account of herself. That length is almost certainly the point. In theaters Friday, October 16.
