By Dr. Barbie Hessel
(Spoiler note: this post discusses details from You Can See Everything*.)
Thirty-four days before Elizabeth Holmes began serving her prison sentence for fraud at Theranos, she and her partner, Billy Evans, invited filmmakers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim to document their lives. That's where You Can See Everything begins. The film follows Holmes and her family before and after she goes to prison, and it keeps circling back to who gets to shape the story of Elizabeth Holmes.
I liked the film's slowness. The close-ups let the tension build, and I felt uncomfortable right along with the people on screen as they talked and paused and tried to manage how they were coming across. More than once I couldn't tell whether Elizabeth was being deliberately obtuse or genuinely missing something. I still can't.
Partway through, Amanda Seyfried, who played Elizabeth in The Dropout, shows up to reenact scenes with Nathan. So now there's a version of Elizabeth watching Nathan's version take shape. She's the one who finally says, more or less, what is going on here. When she asks Nathan whether he's protecting Elizabeth, I sat up. I'd been carrying that question too.
Before Billy, there was Sunny Balwani. He was a senior Theranos executive, a lot older than she was, and their work and personal lives were tangled together for years. Holmes testified that she was raped at 19 while at college and that later Balwani abused and controlled her during their relationship. He denied it.
In the film, Elizabeth's father brings up the rape as a turning point in her life. I watched that moment wondering what Nathan would do. Would he ask her father to say more? Would the rape become the explanation for everything that followed?
He didn't pursue it, and I was glad. The experience belonged to Elizabeth. Her father could say what he believed it meant, but he couldn't tell the story for her. I didn't want to watch two men interpret her abuse while she became the subject of their conversation.
As a trauma therapist, I understand the pull to connect it to everything after. Trauma does shape who we trust. Her relationship with Sunny may have involved real coercion and harm, and I take that seriously. It still doesn't explain deceiving investors. I'm trying to hold both, and honestly, it's uncomfortable.
Billy brings another kind of power dynamic into the picture. The first time I wondered about it was a small moment. Elizabeth is whisking eggs, and Billy takes over and does it his way. I noticed it, but it wasn't enough. People can be particular.
It clicked later. Nathan was talking with a man who was going into business with Billy, and the man started explaining where Theranos went wrong. Billy cut in and tried to shut the whole line of questioning down. Nathan pushed back, and the two of them argued. Billy was deciding what could be said about Theranos, and he was willing to fight Nathan over it.
Then Elizabeth goes to prison, and Billy says he has power of attorney and authority over her finances, social media, and image. I was pretty shocked! He describes writing posts on her account based on what he thinks she'd want. Elizabeth seems to trust him with all of it. Maybe she welcomes it. Prison makes it practical, if nothing else. Still, I kept wondering where her voice ends and his begins.
In the story they tell together, he's her protector and she's the woman whose intentions were misunderstood. I can see why that would feel safe. I'm less sure there's room in it for either of them to be wrong.
Afterward I kept watching videos and reading, hoping to get closer to the truth. I learned more, but I didn't land on a version of Elizabeth I could fully trust. Some things can be checked. Her inner life can't, no matter how much footage there is. The title started to feel like a question. We can look closely at someone and still have to live with what we can't know.
I think that's true off-screen, too. Most of us have someone who tells our story for us, or a version we tell to stay safe. It's worth noticing who is holding the pen.