SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for “You Can See Everything,” now playing in theaters. The question that’s consumed the awards-pundit class since “You Can See Everything” exploded into theaters last week is whether Amanda Seyfried, the unlikely linchpin of this hybrid documentary, can be nominated for or win an acting Oscar. A24 is planning to campaign her for one.
Much of her time onscreen is as herself, reacting in real time — but she does, eventually, re-enact co-director Nathan Fielder’s remembered interactions with disgraced tech founder Elizabeth Holmes. In this, she’s reprising a role that, with the 2022 Hulu series “The Dropout,” already won her an Emmy and a Golden Globe. It’s the role, now that “You Can See Everything” is on track to become one of the most financially successful documentaries in history, that’s become Seyfried’s signature.
To this viewer, the question is at once an amusing thought experiment (sure, why not?), and a testament to Seyfried’s compelling screen presence — and more than a little beside the point. For once, an Oscar seems minimizing. What Seyfried’s doing in her most compelling screen work ever is something other, or more, than simply acting.
To be clear, the parts of “You Can See Everything” when she is literally acting are riveting on their own terms. Seyfried simply wears the role of Holmes easily. She’s doubly disadvantaged — in that we’ve just spent 90 minutes with the real Holmes, against whom we can compare Seyfried, and in that we’ve also spent time absorbing just how little Seyfried understands the enigma of Holmes’ motivations.
And yet Seyfried somehow creates a coherent and compelling version of a woman we don’t understand, and we know she doesn’t, really, either. To pigeonhole Seyfried’s appearance in “You Can See Everything” as, solely, an acting performance misses the rawness of Seyfried’s presence here. She allows herself to be seen thinking through a conundrum, as herself, and falling short of finding answers — in other words, after Holmes and husband Billy Evans, she’s the documentary’s other subject.
Seyfried delivers a painful and unresolved excavation of the mind of an actor, seeming to land in a place of uncertainty as to how her own past work as Holmes has changed the story even as she willingly takes on the part once more. Consider, for instance, the scene in which Seyfried visits Evans at home, after Holmes’ incarceration. This is impressively game and daring.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
