Elizabeth Holmes Is Not the Problem With You Can See Everything

Warning: This post contains spoilers for You Can See Everything We might like to believe that documentary filmmakers are adamantly neutral parties, aiming their cameras at people who are just being themselves and, later, turning whatever the camera captures into objective truth. But because documentaries are, for now, made by humans and not robots, pure objectivity is impossible. When Albert and David Maysles captured Little Edie Bouvier Beale’s exuberant flag-twirling dance in Grey Gardens, they weren’t just casually showing us some random American eccentric in an outlandish headscarf; they were both in awe of her and, at least somewhat, laughing at her. The sequence is funny, jaw-dropping, a little sad. The camera isn’t human, but for better or worse the sensibility behind it is. It may not tell us what to think, but its job is to lead us there.Since its surprise debut at the Telluride Film Festival earlier this fall, You Can See Everything, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, has been widely praised as a groundbreaking documentary work, one that will change the face of nonfiction filmmaking forever. Not so fast. The first half of Fielder and Oppenheim’s film chronicl...