In one notable scene, Holmes tepidly whisks some eggs, her hands trembling, before Evans swoops in and takes the bowl in order to whisk with proper vigor. As Holmes explains to Fielder, Evans, the son of prominent California hoteliers, doesn’t think she is doing a good job. Throughout the film, Evans speaks for Holmes, who shrugs and follows his every direction.
He believes in his wife and in the mission (a new health-tech startup that, like Theranos, involves a miniature diagnostic device, a working prototype for which the couple plans to engineer remotely, while Holmes is in prison). After Holmes fails to understand why the classic Abbott and Costello comedy bit “Who’s on First” is funny, Evans, with all the affection of a zookeeper, explains to Fielder that her mind is "just different," as though Holmes were an exotic creature whose language only he can interpret. Holmes is sitting right beside Evans, whose loyalty, at least until her sentence begins and the movie’s subversive second act takes flight, is absolute.
Holmes, with her unconventional mind and difficult circumstances, is a singular 21st century figure, and Evans functions as her protector and spokesman throughout the film, the mastermind behind her attempted rise from the ashes of public humiliation. The on-screen dynamic seems controlling—one person notes later in the movie that no woman wants to see another woman in a situation like that—but the couple’s experience of their love gives no indication of trouble. Holmes inhabits a version of reality that differs substantially from the one commonly understood in the court of public opinion and the law itself.
She is met in this reality by Evans, who wraps her in the warm embrace of a big, bad bully. He is rich and handsome, too, something Fielder points out in an early scene before Evans comically deflects and runs off to the gym. The implicit question: Why would a man like that be with someone like Holmes?
Evans’ belief in his wife’s reality is so total, the world they’ve constructed together so airtight, that Fielder—for all his meddling—cannot quite pierce it. The director is skilled at exposing the gap between how people see themselves and how the world sees them. With Evans and Holmes, however, that gap is the very thing that makes their bond so impenetrable.
The gravitational force of their love almost pulls Fielder into its orbit, making the director and his prying questions a foil against which Evans’ can demonstrate the totality of his devotion. There is something admirable in her ability to inspire his care, which she accepts completely. But Evans, too, gets something out of their arrangement.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
