You Can See Everything challenges you to consider what's real in every reel

Nathan Fielder has spent years melting brains, inspiring GIFs, encountering wacky real-life people, and showing off those really good grades he got from one of Canada’s top business schools. Beyond inspiring unforgettable giggles, Fielder’s artistic M.O. has impressed through (among other accomplishments) pervasive rug-pulls revealing reality's immense malleability. A daycare location for a nighttime meeting between taxi drivers on Nathan For You, for instance, can suddenly be revealed as a set.

The outstanding Nathan For You series finale Finding Frances explored how much Fielder knew about and could trust elderly Bill Gates impersonator Bill Heath. This guy kept making Fielder question how much he really knew about a man who was constantly on his TV show.

Then there was The Rehearsal, which had Fielder diving through and intersecting so many layers of simulated realities. Throughout all these projects, jokes persist, but so does the sense that what you’re watching can upend itself at any moment. Who knows when Fielder will ratchet things up to the next level of insanity (like bringing a live alligator into an electronics store) or suddenly reveal that everything you’ve seen is a falsehood? Whether it’s a viral video of a pig saving a goat or recreations of Sully Sullenberger listening to Evanescence, Nathan Fielder’s comedy dares us to question what is real and what’s behind those modulations to reality.

That makes Fielder a perfect person to capture the world of Elizabeth Holmes, the former Theranos mastermind and Silicon Valley figurehead who has been convicted of fraud. This woman exists in her own labyrinthine approach to reality, one in which she maintains her innocence. You Can See Everything (which is helmed by Fielder and Primetime director Lance Oppenheimer) starts with Fielder capturing Holmes, her husband Billy Evans, and their two kids in a lavish beachside San Diego home. He arrives as this woman prepares for her imminent prison sentence starting in a month.

With every image captured in the Academy ratio (1.33:1) and the camera often resorting to close-ups echoing similarly cramped frames in Oppenheim’s Primetime, You Can See Everything starts with Fielder and his documentary subjects confined close together. Despite this intimate proximity, concrete answers elude him. Attempts to interview certain people (like Holmes’ father) only inspire ire from Evans. Holmes, meanwhile, speaks in odd statements that both seemingly only make sense to her and are weirdly devoid of malice. When she insists “I’ve never told a lie,” she says it with such assurance…even though it’s clearly false.

Even staring straight into her eyes and maintaining a conversation can’t quite part the curtains and deliver a clear-cut truth. It’s utterly fascinating watching Fielder scrounging for any kind of clarity from Holmes and Evans. He’s got to get creative trying to create a bridge between himself and these idiosyncratic souls, like using an Abbot & Costello routine to illustrate to Holmes how her communication style may create understanding gaps between herself and other people. Meanwhile, dry comedy ensues when Fielder tries cracking jokes (“I used to do a comedy show about business scams...but you actually did a business scam.”) around people who aren’t exactly joke-oriented.

Another later illuminating You Can See Everything conversation involves people talking about celebrity-based documentaries. When someone brings up a Meghan Markle doc made for Netflix, another person responds, “that’s…not really a documentary.” This comment speaks to a larger rot plaguing modern documentary movies. Streamers have saturated the market with celebrity-focused documentaries only existing to marvel at how big Eddie Murphy’s house is or provide cozy PR management for historical monsters.

Interesting visuals? Chronicling everyday people? Actually challenging viewers? These Hoop Dreams, The Gleaners and I, and All the Beauty and the Bloodshed fixtures have no room in the new streaming-approved definition of documentary cinema. Features previously chastising the powerful are now another tool normalizing the bourgeoisie. Amazon’s Melania earlier this year was the blonde-haired, dead-eyed epitome of this disgusting trend.

You Can See Everything, like fellow excellent 2020s docs Time or Crip Camp, reclaims the documentary format back to actual filmmakers. Instead of just rehashing the familiar, Fielder and Oppenheim use documentary cinema to keep audiences on their toes. The camerawork isn’t what you might expect. Various twists and turns navigated through the 170-minute runtime are similarly shocking. Even Ari Balouzian's score (which apparently leans heavily on Bernard Hermann's compositions from Vertigo) doesn’t quite sound like typical orchestral music accompanying a movie about infamous Silicon Valley residents.

Then there’s You Can See Everything’s willingness to challenge its central subjects. Previously, Fielder had no problem pushing back on Boston-originating detectives or someone dropping anti-Semitic remarks in a recreation of a Raising Cane’s. Naturally then, he’s got no issue pushing the buttons of Elizabeth Holmes or Billy Holmes. The celebrity documentary has teeth and subversiveness again. Nathan Fielder rescued the format just in the nick of time.

As for further specifics of what You Can See Everything has to offer…far be it from me to spoil the mind-melting surprises waiting in store. Even Nathan Fielder veterans like myself will be left agog over what he pulls off here. One spoiler-free element I can praise here, though, is the way Fielder poses himself on camera here. Audiences first see Fielder staring at Holmes from behind a yellow-tinted door. Like so many shots of him looming over sets or conversations in The Rehearsal, he’s framed almost like a horror movie villain.

There’s something persistently amusing about just cutting to a shot of Fielder with that blank stare on his face just watching something from afar. Yet it’s also a neat visual detail laced with many potential meanings. Are we seeing Fielder from the perspective of the Holmes family, as an intrusive “monster”? Is this supposed to reinforce Fielder as being an “other” in a space full of Silicon Valley weirdos? This surface-level amusing image’s ambiguity once more forces audiences to question what we’re looking at.

He’s a pilot. He’s saved so many American businesses. He even appeared briefly in Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. Now Nathan Fielder adds another achievement to his repertoire: theatrical film director. With this documentary, he and Oppenheim balloon typical Fielder creative impulses to 170 minutes without straining in the slightest. It isn’t just that You Can See Everything avoids feeling like a bloated Nathan For You episode. Instead, a larger canvas brings out new highs in artistic proficiency from this master comedian. Trust me, You Can See Everything’s extraordinary; it may be the best movie of 2026. Why would I deceive you about that?