It's ironic that there's a sequel of sorts to The Social Network out in theaters currently, because comic genius Nathan Fielder's documentary You Can See Everything might be the most salient film about Big Tech since the 2010 Oscar winner.
The film gives us unprecedented, intimate (and boy, do we mean intimate) access into the post-Theranos life of disgraced tech mogul Elizabeth Holmes, who is currently serving time in prison for defrauding investors. It's one of many films about Silicon Valley scions emerging this year, but arguably, it might be the best of all of them thus far.
Fielder starts out his film by taking us back to 2023, a month before Holmes was set to begin her prison sentence. She and her partner, Billy Evans, have two small children by this point (God, pray for them). Upon a Google search, you'll find that her love interest is the heir to a San Diego hotel company, but the film showcases his own tech aspirations.
San Diego is where the two are temporarily staying, in a beach house, where Elizabeth finds tranquility as her world is crumbling. She is millions of dollars in debt, after years of legal wrangling over her defunct biotech company Theranos. Evans, meanwhile, is trying to start up his own biotech company and, eventually, you'll see him dabble in the rise of AI. More on that later...
It's noticeable throughout the film that though Holmes still has a manipulative personality, she is a broken woman, a stark contrast from the "girlboss" persona she so carefully cultivated in the mid-2010s. She tirelessly tries to convince Fielder and the audience that she did nothing wrong, though this time, it appears that neither are fully convinced. The only thing that appears authentic about her is how deluded she is.
Fielder's signature befuddlement is present throughout the film, and he finds himself quite at home shedding light on the temperament of a disgraced tech mogul. His bizarro-journalism tactics have already been highlighted as something "real reporters" should take their cues from, and frankly, he should earn a Pulitzer next year for what he was able to accomplish.
Though there are a slew of Big Tech-based films coming out this year, including director Alex Gibney's Elon Musk documentary Musk and the Open AI biopic Artificial (with Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman), this one serves as a potential template for how future documentaries on Silicon Valley scions could be filmed. It's rare to get broadcast news (or even podcast) interviews with most of these tech bros anyway, so the cinema verite style Fielder goes for could be a model for other filmmakers.
Now, you must be wondering how he and co-director Lance Oppenheim (of Primetime fame) earned the trust of Holmes' family from the beginning. I'm still somewhat unclear about this, but the film does brilliantly reenact several moments that the crew was not allowed to film, and one of those is the pitch meeting. During this meeting, Evans states that he would only agree to being a part of a production like this if we were to get a cut of the profits, which is antithetical to the work of a documentarian, even an experimental one like Fielder.
And, about that reenactment. For this and others scenes like it, viewers are treated to a surprise cameo from actress Amanda Seyfried (or Sea-fred, as Holmes pronounces it). Actor Christopher Abbott, meanwhile, takes on the role of her brash partner.
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