Equus (1977) — A Provocative and Moving Adaptation by Lumet

☆☆☆☆☆

In Sidney Lumet's adaptation of the highly acclaimed play of the same title by Peter Shaffer, a child psychiatrist, Martin Dysart (Richard Burton) in southern England takes on the difficult case of a young man, Alan Strang (Peter Firth), who has blinded six horses. In attempting to rid Alan of his demons, Dysart must face his own.

Spoilers ahead.

If a boy of seventeen commits such an act of violence as blinding six horses, how would you view him? A madman? Some mentally unwell boy? A criminal? Or someone more passionate than most people dare to be in the modern age? It's a horrific action, don't get me wrong, but what fuels it in Equus is, oddly, all passion and hatred and fear, all at once.

The play takes on a more minimalist form in staging, but to put that to screen materialises the symbols. The horses are a reflection of Alan Strang's religious hysteria, his desire for male virility (which he desires in himself and in others; the play makes it a metaphor, the movie makes it physical), his own self-hatred, his own masochistic tendencies. The horses, and therefore masculinity, are sexualised. Take three key scenes of this: the beach scene, Alan's bedroom ritual, and Alan's night ritual. The beach scene positions us as Alan, in his smaller, subsequently submissive perspective of the horse and rider. Looking up, it's a dominant image, close up, intense. The bedroom ritual depicts a dual aspect of his character; his immaturity and his masochism. The genealogy is quite childish, using names like "Spankus" and words like "chinkle-chankle", but in turn spurs himself with a coat hanger until he orgasms while looking at a drawing of a horse on his wall. The masturbatory fantasies continue into the real as he partakes in the night ritual, riding the horse Nugget in a field and proclaiming his faith in his play-pretend faith and, again, spurs himself to orgasm, before simply standing there naked in the aftermath and admiring it. The girl, Jill, then acts as a complicator to his ritualistic, religious worship. Normality versus primality. A choice of becoming normal, moving on to typical heteronormative sexuality and life. You see the metaphor here? Blatant. Not that I'm complaining, it's still well-written.

My main issue with this is that, giving the horses a physicality to them, a reality, rather than a bunch of blokes in wire horse heads, takes something away from the metaphor. It concretes it. It's real. Not some theatrical fighting match, not some stage ritual. It becomes real. I think that's my issue in the seeing of the horses' blinding, too. The graphic nature of the scene, while the shot of the blood falling onto Alan's face is very well-filmed, again acts to takes something away from it. I do prefer the play in that regard. The illusion is broken and it feels like witnessing a crime, a scene from a horror movie, rather than the misery of a repressed, unstable, and terrified young man.

The performances in here are wonderful. I could go on and on and on (clearly) about Peter Firth's performance, especially considering how taxing the role must've been. Same with Richard Burton's performance as Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist in a loveless, sexless marriage, caught up in a psychological boxing match with his patient who has known more passion than he ever could, even with all of his books on the Ancient Greeks and old world pagans which Alan can channel so well. The rest of the acting is wonderful too, there is genuinely nothing I can complain about. Colin Blakely and Joan Plowright play Frank and Dora Strang, Alan's opposite parents; an oppressive, emotionally constipated father and a religious fanatic mother. Jenny Agutter as Jill as a juxtaposing figure to Alan's psychological impotence and pagan horse fanaticism as a free-spirited young woman of the modern era does well, and Harry Andrews as Dalton the stable owner and Eileen Atkins as Hesther the magistrate friend of Dysart, the pair acting as outsider perspective on the case, are good too.

The dynamic between Dysart and Alan interests me the most. Like I said, it's a boxing match psychologically between those two. Dysart was the only person who could truly understand him, stepping in as a quasi-father figure, wanting to help him. In applying these modern psychiatric techniques, the film argues on what is more savage; former civilisation, the barbaric, old ways of our ancestors, or the modern stripping of individuality until we are nothing more than drones? The ending is incomplete, going hand in hand with this question. Alan is cured. But was this right? Cured of his one true passion, his obsession, the thing that gave him the ability to live more freely than nearly every other repressed, oppressed person in this cast? Dysart is left in a state of confusion, of distress, of trying to understand whether he has done the truly right thing or ritualistically stripped away Alan's self, the kind of self he could only dream of.

I, in short, if you truly cannot tell, adore Equus. Even if I prefer it as a play, the film does plenty of it justice and gives light to ideas challenging people to this day.