You Can See Everything’s Secret Star Will Make You Rethink Everything

Contains spoilers for “You Can See Everything”

Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s documentary “You Can See Everything” features one crucial figure who cannot be discussed in a spoiler-free review. Her involvement changes the film’s shape, tone and meaning in unexpected ways. That person is Amanda Seyfried, who portrayed Elizabeth Holmes in the 2022 miniseries “The Dropout.”

After completing “The Dropout,” Seyfried believed she had moved on from Holmes. Instead, the documentary brings her back to her Emmy-winning role, using reenactments to recreate events witnessed by the filmmakers but never captured on camera. One early business meeting delivers the film’s biggest shock: Holmes’ husband, Billy Evans — played in the reenactments by Seyfried’s “The Testament of Ann Lee” co-star Christopher Abbott — demands a share of the documentary’s profits. The unusual and ethically troubling request threatens to draw the audience into the same questionable world as the film’s subjects.

A24 agrees to the arrangement in order to get the production moving, though closing title cards reveal that Evans abandoned the deal after filming ended. The disclosure appears to contradict Holmes’ claims that she would not profit from the documentary. Yet Holmes leaves the room just before Evans makes his demand, allowing her either to claim genuine ignorance or to maintain plausible deniability. Fielder later visits Holmes in prison to ask about what happened. Because filming inside the prison is not permitted, Seyfried must once again recreate the encounter.

Seyfried’s role expands well beyond the reenactments. During the film’s second half, she works alongside Fielder and occasionally pushes back against his methods. His fascination with elaborate layers of reality and performance reaches an especially strange peak when Seyfried watches archival footage of the real Holmes watching Seyfried portray her in “The Dropout.”

That sequence exposes the peculiar tension at the heart of the biographical drama. What does it mean for a real person to respond to a dramatized version of their life — particularly when that version is not entirely accurate? The questions become even more complicated when the subject herself is suspected of fabricating parts of her own story.

Seyfried eventually speaks with the real Holmes by phone and confronts Evans in person. Of all the people in the documentary, Evans emerges as the film’s most plainly unsympathetic presence. Debates over whether documentaries and docudramas are inherently exploitative seem minor beside his decision to monetize his wife’s public image, create an AI version of her and acknowledge that he posts on her X account without her consent. In one particularly revealing exchange, Evans confronts Seyfried over her criticism of Charlie Kirk.

While recreating Fielder’s prison interview with Holmes, Seyfried perceptively questions whether he has been manipulated by his subject. Viewers familiar with the painstaking reconstructions in “The Rehearsal” may be inclined to trust Fielder’s recollection. But when he begins doubting his own memory — changing Holmes’ words from “I know he was talking to you about it” to “I know he was talking to you about something” — Seyfried raises the possibility that he is softening the exchange because he fears implicating Holmes.

Given the widespread critical and audience enthusiasm for “You Can See Everything,” speculation has already turned to its Oscar prospects. The film could potentially become the first documentary nominated for Best Picture — or the second, if “Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness,” which competed in the one-time-only “Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production” category at the first Academy Awards in 1929, is included. There is also a more unexpected awards question: could Amanda Seyfried earn a nomination for Best Supporting Actress?

The nearest comparison may be Maria Bakalova’s nomination for “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” Although that film was not a conventional documentary, its cringe-comedy format placed actors in scenes with unsuspecting real people, including Rudy Giuliani. Bakalova, however, played a character throughout her appearances. Seyfried’s performance is more difficult to categorize because she is portraying Holmes only in certain sections of the film. Her reenactments are strong enough to merit awards attention, but her most compelling scenes often come when she appears to be speaking as herself. That ambiguity could work both for and against her.

There is, of course, another complication: is Seyfried ever simply being herself in the scenes outside the reenactments, or is she still performing in some way? Fielder has long encouraged audiences to question how much of his awkward screen persona is natural and how much is carefully constructed. The same uncertainty inevitably follows a professional actor sharing the frame with him. “You Can See Everything” may reveal a great deal, but some parts of its performances — and the people behind them — may remain unknowable.