Remember the Woman Who Claimed to "Change the World with a Drop of Blood"? A24's Buzzworthy Documentary Unveils Elizabeth Holmes' Perfect Illusion
Near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes
Summary
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A look inside her life before prison: The director personally followed and filmed Elizabeth Holmes and her husband Billy Evans in an attempt to shatter her perfect facade.
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A surprise appearance by Amanda Seyfried: Amanda, who played her in the series The Dropout, made an unprecedented appearance to confront footage of Holmes herself.
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A hit with both critics and the box office: It broke opening-week box office records for documentaries over the past 20 years and is even tipped as a potential contender for Best Picture at the Oscars.
Remember Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who always wore black turtlenecks and claimed she could “change the world with a single drop of blood”? The former Silicon Valley billionaire was later exposed in the scam of the century. Just when it seemed her story had ended with her prison sentence, A24’s new documentary You Can See Everything took over the conversation.
Directed by comedy creators Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the film not only set a 20-year opening weekend box office record for a documentary, but also earned near-perfect scores on Rotten Tomatoes and Letterboxd. Viewers say it is a skin-crawling viewing experience.
Her final days before prison, captured on film
The three-hour film spends its first half in 2023, tracking the days right before Elizabeth entered prison. Nathan Fielder and his crew stayed with her and her husband, Billy Evans, in a beach house. You won’t see much heavy dramatization; you just watch Nathan try to break through her flawless persona.
As the camera zooms in, Nathan stares straight into her famous blue eyes and asks, “Are you being real right now?” It is probably the most breathtaking moment in the entire film. As she continues to insist she never lied, and her husband Billy pitches a so-called “Theranos 2.0” inside a WeWork, it really gets hard to tell if this is master-level manipulation or if they simply live in their own world.
Even Amanda Seyfried shows up? The experiment gets wild
If the first half is a suffocatingly real observation, the second half (set in 2025) is where the film gets truly wild. Nathan Fielder surprisingly brought in Amanda Seyfried, who played Elizabeth in the series The Dropout, to join the cast.
Picture the scene: Amanda, who won an Emmy for playing her, watches the real Elizabeth watch clips of her performance. Nathan places Amanda in a series of simulated scenarios, trying to extract some truth from these mixed reactions of reality and fiction. Watching Amanda wrestle with her duty as an actor, her fictional character, and the real person makes for an incredibly satisfying watch as the perspective constantly shifts.
After watching You Can See Everything, you probably still won’t be able to completely see through Elizabeth Holmes’s inner world, but the film’s lingering impact is that it makes you start questioning everything right in front of your eyes.
There is currently no news of a Hong Kong release for the film, but hopefully A24 will bring this highly discussed work here soon!
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