Nathan Fielder's “You Can See Everything”: 261 kilometers to the cinema

Everyone is talking about “Zobaczysz Wszystko”. Some say it is unbelievable that “Zobaczysz Wszystko” even exists. “Zobaczysz Wszystko” is the best documentary there is. “Zobaczysz Wszystko” will win the Oscar for best film.

I too will now talk incessantly about “Zobaczysz Wszystko”, being obnoxious in the process, while everyone in Germany still has to wait for December 3rd, the date on which “You Can See Everything” – the title under which the film is released here and elsewhere – will be released in cinemas.

I saw the documentary by Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder in Poland last weekend. And now consider it my greatest task to be both the keeper of a secret and the source of biting jealousy for others.

Just a few days ago it was announced that the film had found a distributor in Germany with Sony. When December 3rd was finally chosen as the start date, I had already bought my ticket for the Cinema City Kinepolis in Poznań and couldn't think of anything else.

We drove across the border in a borrowed VW Touran with beige leather seats on the “Freedom Highway,” as a sign read. One of my companions told me about a friend in Prague who wanted to organize a party train full of impatient Berlin cineastes because the film was already showing in the Czech Republic. So we followed a cinema tourism trend. The mega cinema in Poznań is almost sold out. Whether others also traveled from Germany?

Then the film begins. Its very premise is absurd. It begins in 2023: In the last 34 days before Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes begins her prison sentence for fraudulent millions, she invites the documentary team to accompany her and her family as they spend their last days together - holy days, one would think - together. This way the truth about her can finally come to light, says Holmes. She maintains her innocence to this day.

Even when Nathan Fielder, who a Substack user aptly described as "indoor Werner Herzog", moves in with Holmes after a few days so that he doesn't miss anything, we are still in the more or less "straightforward" part of the documentary at this point.

Then the second part of the film begins, which takes place two years later and presents the first part in a completely new light. As unsatisfactory and trite as the description may be, the only word that comes to mind is “cross-border.”

Completely new questions suddenly arise: Is Holmes a victim or a master manipulator? Who is actually lying to whom? Was I, as a viewer, also lied to? Are important information being deliberately withheld from me? And is the fact that these thoughts are awakened in me part of a big screw-up?

I would like to leave a review of what exactly happens on the screen in the 174 minutes to my colleagues when the film is released in Germany. Ultimately, it left me with one feeling above all else: doubts that relate to all levels of the film.

Another doubt now creeps in. I couldn't contain my impatience, so I gave in and went on a little road trip. I visited a Polish cinema, saw perhaps the best film of the year and ate Poznań Rogal. The price for this is the frustration that I can hardly talk to anyone about what this film is able to reveal. So I too will have to wait for December 3rd.