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Equus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Equus | |
|---|---|
| Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Sidney Lumet |
| Screenplay by | Peter Shaffer |
| Based on | Equus by Peter Shaffer |
| Produced by | Elliott Kastner Lester Persky |
| Starring | Richard Burton Peter Firth Jenny Agutter Joan Plowright Colin Blakely |
| Cinematography | Oswald Morris |
| Edited by | John Victor-Smith |
| Music by | Richard Rodney Bennett |
| Production company | Winkast Film Productions |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date | 14 October 1977 (United Kingdom)19 October 1977 (United States) |
| Running time | 137 minutes |
| Countries | United Kingdom United States |
| Language | English |
Equus is a 1977 psychological drama film directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Peter Shaffer, based on his play of the same name. The film stars Richard Burton, Peter Firth, Colin Blakely, Joan Plowright, Eileen Atkins, and Jenny Agutter. The story concerns a psychiatrist treating a teenager who has blinded horses in a stable, attempting to find the root of his horse worship.
Lumet’s translation of the acclaimed play to a cinematic version incorporated some realism, in the use of real horses as opposed to human actors, and a graphic portrayal of the blinding. Despite some criticism of this approach, the film received positive reviews, with awards for Burton, Firth and Agutter.
Plot
Hesther Salomon, a magistrate, asks her platonic friend Martin Dysart, a disillusioned psychiatrist who works with disturbed teenagers at a hospital in Hampshire, England, to treat a 17-year-old stable boy named Alan Strang after he blinded six horses with a sickle. With Alan only singing TV commercial jingles, Martin goes to see the boy’s parents, the non-religious Frank Strang and his Christian fundamentalist wife Dora. She had taught her son the basics of sex and that God sees all, but the withdrawn Alan replaced his mother’s deity with a god he called Equus, incarnated in horses. Frank discloses to Martin that he witnessed Alan late at night in his room, haltered and flagellating himself, as he chanted a series of names in Biblical genealogy-fashion which culminated in the name Equus as he climaxed.
Martin begins winning the respect and confidence of Alan, who shares his earliest memory of a horse from when he was six and a man approached him on a horse named Trojan. Alan imagined the horse spoke to him, and said his true name was Equus, and this was the name of all horses. The man took Alan up on Trojan, which the boy found thrilling, but his parents reacted negatively and injured him taking him off the horse. Martin also meets the stable manager, who reveals Alan secured his job through another employee, Jill. Devastated at the horses’ injuries she indirectly caused, Jill has taken medical leave.
Eventually, Alan admits to Martin that he would secretly take horses away from the stables at night to ride them nude, chanting prayers to Equus until he reached orgasm, after which he caressed them lovingly. Martin envies the boy’s passionate paganism, in comparison to his own empty life, where he has ceased intimacies with his wife and is plagued by nightmares of ritualistically slaughtering children in Homer‘s Greece, wearing the Mask of Agamemnon. Given an aspirin serving as a placebo “truth drug“, Alan further reveals that one evening Jill tempted him to go to a Swedish pornographic film at a local cinema, where he was shocked to see his father. Going back with Jill to the stables, she stripped and offered him sex but he was unable to perform and, although she was sympathetic, told her to leave. Naked, and tormented that Equus sees all and is a jealous god, he blinded the horses.
Martin is left troubled by the fact that he can treat Alan to take away his pain but in the process will deprive the boy of his passion, leaving him as emotionally neutered as Martin himself.
Cast
- Richard Burton as Dr. Martin Dysart
- Peter Firth as Alan Strang
- Colin Blakely as Frank Strang
- Joan Plowright as Dora Strang
- Harry Andrews as Harry Dalton
- Eileen Atkins as Hesther Saloman
- Jenny Agutter as Jill Mason
- Kate Reid as Margaret Dysart
- John Wyman as Horseman
- Frazier Mohawk as the Ringmaster
- Elva Mai Hoover as Miss Raintree
- Ken James as Mr. Pearce
- David Gardner as Dr. Bennett
- James Hurdle as Mr. Davies
- Sheldon Rybowski as Child
- Brook Williams as Art