AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Between the secret, sold-out screening at the Telluride Film Festival and it being the hottest ticket at the New York Film Fest, audiences seem eager to get a handle on Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced entrepreneur behind Theranos.
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ELIZABETH HOLMES: I'm not that person. I can promise you that.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: The movie "You Can See Everything" brings together Holmes, who's currently in prison for defrauding investors, and comedian Nathan Fielder, TV's absurdist master of blurring lines between reality and fiction. Critic Bob Mondello says watching these two search for truth is almost physically dizzying.
Six weeks ago, on the same day an audience in Telluride was locking phones in pouches before seeing a film whose title had not been announced, A24 put a one-minute scene online that went viral.
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HOLMES: I don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course I'm not deceiving you. I'm engaging with you as a human being.
MONDELLO: Elizabeth Holmes, smiling in severe close-up...
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HOLMES: Why would I deceive you?
MONDELLO: ...Eyes wide and unblinking.
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HOLMES: There's no reason for me to do that.
MONDELLO: The camera switches between her and Nathan Fielder...
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NATHAN FIELDER: OK.
MONDELLO: ...Not smiling, but also in tight close-up.
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FIELDER: All right. OK, good chat.
MONDELLO: Both are awkward as the camera holds for a few extra beats - Holmes with her odd, thousand-yard stare, head rocking ever so slightly side to side, Fielder seeming puzzled by her enigmatic smile.
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FIELDER: You're being real right now?
HOLMES: I'm always being real.
MONDELLO: Again, the head rocking - then a wide shot shows why. They're inches apart, staring into each other's eyes over the back of a couch, her leg extended behind her so she can nudge a baby bouncer with her foot. You can see everything in "You Can See Everything," but sometimes you don't quite know what you're seeing. The film begins about a month before Holmes started a prison sentence in 2023 for defrauding Theranos investors.
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FIELDER: You really feel you did nothing wrong?
HOLMES: I did not.
FIELDER: So where did things get lost? Like, how are you where you are right now?
HOLMES: I wish I knew, you know?
MONDELLO: She had claimed to have a device that would run hundreds of medical tests, many from just a few drops of blood. And even though she was a college dropout with no medical training, the company's valuation shot up to $9 billion. When the device didn't do what she'd promised, Holmes lost everything, including her freedom. Then weeks before she had to report to prison, she and her boyfriend, Billy Evans, offered Fielder and his co-director, Lance Oppenheim, access...
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FIELDER: So I know you guys invited me to stay here.
MONDELLO: ...Total access.
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FIELDER: Does any part of you worry about me being here 24/7?
HOLMES: I don't think so.
FIELDER: But what if I see something that makes you look bad?
MONDELLO: For the film's first half, that question takes a backseat to whether anything Holmes or her boyfriend say should be taken at face value. Evans embraces transparency to the point that he lets the directors film him naked but, when questioned, talks like this.
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FIELDER: I mean, weren't you worried she was scamming you?
BILLY EVANS: A hundred percent, but what did she have to gain from me?
FIELDER: Isn't your family rich?
EVANS: Yeah, I think that there's, like, a lot of different levels of wealth.
MONDELLO: And Holmes - either naive or calculating, clueless or sincere - asserts that people simply misunderstood a claim she made about the Theranos devices' ability to do hundreds of tests from a finger-prick of blood. She says it can do them but defines can in such a bizarrely convoluted way that Fielder resorts to playing Abbott and Costello...
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BUD ABBOTT: Who's on first. What's on second. I don't know's on third.
MONDELLO: ...To demonstrate its weirdness.
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LOU COSTELLO: Well, then who's on first?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: I mean the guy's name.
ABBOTT: Who.
COSTELLO: The guy playing first.
ABBOTT: Who.
COSTELLO: The guy playing first base.
ABBOTT: Who is on first.
COSTELLO: What are you asking me for? I don't know.
MONDELLO: She doesn't get it, simply doesn't understand the joke, which calls into question whether her truths - what she understands - can be understood by others. Then around the halfway point, Holmes goes to prison, and the film goes so meta that it tosses documentary form out the window.
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EVANS: I know what you're feeling.
FIELDER: No, you don't.
MONDELLO: "You Can See Everything" is destabilizing, a gonzo, often hilarious counterpoint to the fall's other tech mogul takedowns - of Facebook's founder in "The Social Reckoning," of the world's first trillionaire in "Musk." This is a wilder and more inventive ride and, against all odds, a more revealing one, with Fielder and Oppenheim eliciting responses...
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HOLMES: I mean, it took me a really long time to be OK with...
MONDELLO: ...That feel genuine...
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HOLMES: ....With letting someone see me cry.
MONDELLO: ...Utterly authentic until, in one unbroken shot, a tear wells on cue and rolls down the cheek facing the camera, and you're again questioning everything you've seen in "You Can See Everything." I'm Bob Mondello.
(SOUNDBITE OF MT. JOY SONG, "DIRTY LOVE - LIVE AT THE SALT SHED, DECEMBER 2023") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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