Nathan Fielder has accomplished a lot in his 43 years. His first show Nathan For You (2013-2017) was a hit, following in the footsteps of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim in chronicling American eccentrics, without any of condescension or misanthropy of the Awesome Job! duo. In the 2020s, his work evolved dramatically and he emerged as a major auteur with The Curse and two seasons of The Rehearsal. Fielder’s first show was funny enough, but there were no signs in 2013 that this guy would ever rise above becoming the Millennial Allen Funt (or Ashton Kutcher). Rather than take token acting gigs in TV, commercials, or already vanishing studio comedies, Fielder focused on himself and pulled off more than most in the entertainment industry.
Where to start? In the first season of The Rehearsal, Fielder helped a man overcome his social anxiety by rebuilding the neighborhood bar where he played trivia, all so he could “rehearse” his trivia nights and overcome his anxieties. Irritated by all the Synecdoche, New York comparisons (I’m assuming), Fielder approached commercial airline pilots for the second season of The Rehearsal and discovered that poor interpersonal communication between pilots was the cause of an alarming number of crashes; he ended the season by flying a plane himself. 2023’s The Curse saw Fielder and Emma Stone play an on-the-rocks couple so woke they need a nap trying to get a reality show off the ground with the help of scumbag cameraman Safdie. Shot with ultra long lenses and imbued with an Altmanesque patience and bemusement, The Curse proved that Fielder and his persona could be used to great effect in a fictional context.
What does Nathan Fielder accomplish in You Can See Everything? He gets Elizabeth Holmes and Amanda Seyfried to make the same justification for bending the truth, otherwise known as “lying.” During the nearly three-hour documentary, co-directed with Lance Oppenheim, Fielder talks to Holmes and her husband Billy Evans, a familiar type if you ever followed Anna Nicole Smith. Evans isn’t only a dead ringer for wide-eyed psycho killer Nick Reiner, but immediately recalls the equally slippery Howard K. Stern, Smith’s very own Colonel Tom Parker. In the last hour of the documentary, Fielder begins to doubt whether Evans is playing Holmes or vice versa; either way, there’s not much mystery here, or eccentricity, and that’s what sucks the life out of You Can See Everything.
Fielder has profiled loan sharks, ambulance chasers, corporate stooges, government officials, liberal scammers, and experts—along with “experts”—in dozens of fields. So often the best moments of his shows are the stray comments, the inscrutable habits, and bizarre beliefs that bubble up after letting people talk for long enough. But Holmes is the first of Fielder’s subjects with extensive media training; as obnoxious as Evans may be, he’s not ignorant of the press or how they operate. Neither of them, for example, are surprised by the liberties taken by Hulu’s The Dropout, starring Amanda Seyfried as Holmes during her rise and fall at Theranos. Fielder plays the couple an episode, all three of them in bed, and Holmes falls back crying. “I can’t watch this.”
She goes to prison in 2023, and two years later Fielder starts visiting Holmes there and hires Seyfried to play her in recreations of their visits (Christopher Abbott plays Evans). Seyfried warns Fielder not to get “sucked in,” but he’s starting to think that Evans might be the one being played, or at the very least, that him and Holmes are “in on it” together (Evans unsuccessfully tries to negotiate a backend deal with A24). Seyfried is convinced that Holmes has no idea that Evans is using her image on billboards, posting as her on her Twitter account, or trying to make a financial arrangement with A24 and the producers of You Can See Everything. Their last conversation is the only time the movie really goes anywhere: Fielder pushes Seyfried on the exaggerations of The Dropout, and Seyfried is caught and stumped surprisingly quickly: “Well, it’s TV! You know how it is.” Yeah, not far off from Holmes’ semantic tap-dance with Theranos investors, and the difference between “can” and “is able to.”
For those unfamiliar with Fielder’s TV work, You Can See Everything might be revelatory—Manohla Dargis, for example, was all swept up, along with everyone who saw it in Venice six weeks ago—but for those who’ve been following his vertiginous rise for the last 13 years, the film is a bloated, minor work, with none of the innovation of his recent TV series. It’s a disappointment, but a small one, because after its remarkable commercial success, Fielder will likely be able to write his own ticket for a while now. I’m sure he’ll come up with something more interesting soon enough.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NARCFILM