Is The Best Film Of The Year A Documentary?
Is the best film of the year a documentary? You Can See Everything, which was recently released in the US and arrives in UK cinemas next month, drew plenty of hype in cinephile circles when it was announced, and has since become the film everyone’s talking about. It’s co-directed by and stars Canadian filmmaker Nathan Fielder, best known for shows like The Rehearsal and starring in The Curse opposite Emma Stone. The subject is Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud for the claims of her company Theranos. Here’s why it’s suddenly tipped for an Oscar:
What is You Can See Everything about?
Elizabeth Holmes has already had high-profile documentaries and dramas made about her, notably the Hulu series The Dropout in which she was played by Amanda Seyfried. So why has this new one garnered such hype? It’s partly to do with Fielder himself, who’s steadily built a reputation first as a cult comedian and then as a much-praised filmmaker. His shows Nathan For You and The Rehearsal are both docu-comedies that blur the lines between the scripted and the genuine, something like the work of Sacha Baron Cohen in his Borat days. Then came The Curse, a comedy thriller in which he starred with Emma Stone and Benny Safdie. So his often surreal and toe-curlingly cringey comedy seemed like a perfect fit with the enigmatic Elizabeth Holmes.
Nathan Fielder’s often surreal and toe-curlingly cringey comedy seemed like a perfect fit with the enigmatic Elizabeth Holmes.
Rufus, Contributing Entertainment Writer
Holmes already had a reputation for certain eccentricities, not least due to widely reported things like lowering her voice to an unnaturally low register to sound more authoritative, and widely reported message exchanges with Ramesh Balwani, her former partner and Theranos COO. The documentary begins just over a month before Holmes was sent to prison for her role in defrauding investors over Theranos’s blood-testing claims.
She invited Fielder and co-director Lance Oppenheim (whose other film, the Robert Pattinson-starring Primetime, releases at the end of October) to document her every move, and we meet figures in her life such as her current partner William Evans. What began as a project to paint a picture of a woman who’s been in the spotlight so often over time begins to morph into a very different project stretched across three years that’s a close, sometimes unsettling portrait of Holmes.
Ok, but is it really the best film of the year?
You Can See Everything became anticipated on social media the instant the first trailer and posters dropped, with a moment in which Holmes stares at Fielder with a wide smile and piercing blue eyes getting particular meme attention. It only snowballed when the film received rave critical reviews, scoring 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (though that’s since dropped to a no-less-excellent 98%) and now sits as the top-reviewed film on Letterboxd. As is often with these types of films, there’s a question as to whether it’ll perform as well in Europe as in the US- but early indicators seem to show You Can See Everything fever is growing in the UK.
Of course, you’ll only know for yourself whether it lives up to the hype when it releases on 20th November, but it sure seems like the head-spinning, enthralling documentary is a must-see, and potentially tipped for Oscars.
