You Can See Everything: Why am I supposed to be excited for this documentary?

So, apparently I am supposed to be excited about some documentary?You are. Nathan Fielder’s You Can See Everything, a study of convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, debuted to raves at the Telluride Film Festival in September and subsequently opened to thumping US box-office returns. It arrives here next week as a genuine cultural phenomenon. The Americans were dressing up as Fielder and Holmes at Halloween. Saturday Night Live did a parody. YCSE is the new rock ‘n’ roll (or something).Hang on? Nathan Who and Elizabeth What?Fielder, who co-directs with Lance Oppenheim, is the canny Canadian documentarian and satirist behind TV series The Curse (bitter skit on late capitalism with Emma Stone) and The Rehearsal (indescribably strange docu-comedy in which he helps everyday citizens overcome unlikely difficulties). Elizabeth Holmes was that woman who claimed to have invented a device that tested for a wide array of diseases from just one drop of blood. She was indicted for fraud in 2018 and is still serving time in Texas. Amanda Seyfried won an Emmy for playing Holmes in the TV series The Dropout. Have I been asleep all year or has YCSE come out of nowhere?Yes. Out of the leftest bit of left field. The film debuted on September 6th at a secret screening. Attendees at Telluride, unaware of what they were about to watch, had phones confiscated on the way in to the cinema. Many didn’t even know the documentary existed before the titles appeared. “The sensation of ‘WTF?’ I’ve got to watch this!’ did not subside as the movie went on,” Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote from the Colorado event. “It only intensified.”So what’s so special about it?Ah now, that is the tricky bit. Much of the praise was directed towards a second half in which – no spoilers – the film takes a notably unexpected turn. To that point, You Can See Everything has already been pretty darn strange. Fielder and film crew join Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, at their luxurious beach house near San Diego as she prepares for prison. Shot in the style of a dramatic feature, with close-ups and ambient score, the picture sees the film-maker puzzling over his subject’s slippery relationship with the truth. READ MOREWasn’t there some meme?You are thinking of the teaser clip showing Fielder and Holmes talking intensely, faces inches apart. “You’re being real right now?” he asks. “I’m always being real,” she replies. Wags made comparison with that unavoidable video of Lauren Layfield and Hacker T Dog – “We’re just normal men” – cracking up on CBBC.Do I hear an Oscar record is set to be broken?You do. You Can See Everything seems certain to become the first ever documentary to get a best picture nomination. Astonishing, but true.