This story contains a spoiler about ‘You Can See Everything.’

Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder’s runaway-hit documentary You Can See Everything reintroduces audiences to Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes, who was convicted of fraud in 2022. Holmes maintains she is innocent.

Through Fielder’s lens, the film prompts us to question her conduct anew by exploring the meaning of acting, drama, truth, lies and fiction.

In the film, Holmes objects to a quote of hers reported by the New York Times. According to the Times, Holmes said of actors portraying her: “They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created.”

In Fielder’s documentary, Holmes’s husband reads the quote and says it doesn’t sound like something she would say. He suggests Holmes said instead: “They’re playing a character they created,” and she agrees.

Partly through the film’s interviews with Holmes and her husband, as well as commentary by Fielder, viewers are led to wonder: Has she been playing a character she created, intended to deceive others? Is she now playing a role? Does she even know?

If Holmes is deliberately playing a role, we are inclined to condemn her as a fraudulent deceiver, well-deserving of her punishment; if not, we may be more inclined to see her sympathetically — flawed, caught up in a scheme largely wrought by others.

It might seem that, because each person knows what they’re doing, they’re the authority on whether they are playing a role.

But Fielder’s film, and his previous work that straddles the line between awkward comedy and social inquiry, challenges where the boundaries........

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