In ‘You Can See Everything,’ Elizabeth Holmes meets her equal in comedian Nathan Fielder

In other words, Seyfried is watching Holmes react to Seyfried’s portrayal of Holmes, who was probably also playing a character herself. But Seyfried is not the only one creating a crude approximation of the real Elizabeth. Evans has constructed a life-like AI avatar of his wife, trapped inside of a large vertical screen that he wheels over to the dinner table to sit with him and his kids as though she’s actually there.

The remainder of the film is a constellation of colliding personas. Though it’s a non-fiction documentary, it’s clear that everyone involved is, to some extent, also performing for the cameras. How could they not? Seyfried’s determination to understand Holmes’ story seems pure, but it’s not lost on the audience that she just scored a leading role in one of the most talked-about films of the year.

Meanwhile, Evans behaves in such an unfathomably egregious manner that he may even be intentionally playing the villain to drum up sympathy for his reviled wife.

Evans knows that Fielder and Oppenheim are not convinced of Holmes’ innocence. This documentary will not sway anyone to believe that his wife is being wrongly held in federal custody. But Evans makes himself appear so appallingly unlikable that some viewers may leave the theater feeling bad for Holmes, seeing her as a victim, and allowing her to double-down on another persona she adopted while on trial: a harmless, docile woman who was manipulated by her ex-partner to obliviously tell a cascade of increasingly harmful lies.

Once Holmes is in jail, Fielder is not allowed to bring recording devices when he visits her, so he tries to write a script of their conversations from memory, struggling to accurately recreate the nuances of a conversation where every last word carries immense meaning. With Seyfried reprising her role from “The Dropout,” we see the pair practice reading the script, editing the language as Fielder tries to recall Holmes’ exact phrasing and delivery.

In character as Holmes, Seyfried says, “People think Amanda’s show is a documentary. I get treated worse because of how she portrayed me.”

As she reads the lines, Seyfried breaks character.

“I didn’t do that,” the actress says. “She did that to herself.”