HENRY FOX-MOUNTCHRISTEN-WINDSOR ↳ “What are we even defending here, Philip? What kind of legacy? What kind of family, that says, we’ll take the murder, we’ll take the raping and pillaging and the colonizing, we’ll scrub it up nice and neat in a museum, but oh no, you’re a bloody poof? That’s beyond our sense of decorum! I’ve bloody well had it. I’ve sat about long enough letting you and Gran and the weight of the damned world keep me pinned, and I’m finished. I don’t care. You can take your legacy and your decorum and you can shove it up your fucking arse, Philip. I’m done.”[x, x]
The scene in the hospital closet when Henry and Alex realise their animosity towards each other stems from a misunderstanding holds one of my (many) favourite moments in this movie.
Henry has just admitted that he “could have been nicer” when he first met Alex at the Melbourne climate conference.
It’s a sweet moment, but it’s still guarded. He’s not given away anything in terms of what he was feeling or why.
It’s not until Alex is provoked by Henry’s mocking disbelief that this changes. Alex chooses, in that moment, to be honest and vulnerable. He tells Henry how that dismissal made him feel:
“It was my first foray into the world as a public figure and I was really scared, and you could’ve helped me and you didn’t.”
Watch Henry’s face after Alex says this. He just deflates.
It shatters Henry’s memory of that event. Prior to Alex’s revelation, Henry had only thought about his own perspective, struggling as he was to process his grief while being paraded in public by the Firm. Meeting Alex - someone who felt so very dangerous - was simply too much in those circumstances.
I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.
Henry had never stopped to think that he’d actually hurt Alex in that small act of self-preservation.
Until now.
And you can see every thought of this realisation in Henry’s expression, in the downward glance he shoots Alex, in his sigh. There are so many moments in this movie where Nicholas Galitzine beautifully conveys Henry’s inner thoughts and emotions with zero dialogue. I love all of them, but especially this one.
