Customer Reviews

Equus (Widescreen)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Read the play then watch this movie. Intense and disturbing. Richard Burton is fantastic!

Richard Burton narrates to the audience and stars as a psychiatrist who is to help an english teenage boy, Alan (Peter Firth), who seems to be out of touch of reality. He loves horses and dreams of horses. Alan must see the psychiatrist every day and make progress or he will end up in a mental hospital. He is not allowed to watch television according to his parents, but remebers specific jingles and repeats them often. His behavior at times is erratic. Dr. Martin Dysart had odd dreams of his own and must get to the root of Alan's problem. Alan will relay to Dr. Dysart his own memories as a child and his obsession for a horse. ADULTS ONLY! Includes full frontal male and female nudity and sexual situations. Cast also includes Joan Plowright, Colin Blakly and Kate Reid. Richard Burton and Peter Firth were both nominated for an Academy Award.

"Equus" restored my faith in Sidney Lumet after watching a few of his films that bombed. Lumet transfers the stage play beautifully to the screen, exploring an interesting case of a boy who has blinded six horses. Richard Burton is magnificent and one of the only actors that can carry on long-winded dialogues with conviction. Equally able is the deranged boy (played by Peter Firth) who cross-examines Burton, knocking him off his feet in a similar manner to Matt Damon in "Good Will Hunting."

"Equus" explores what it means to be normal. Burton's character realizes that being normal, to a certain degree, is having abnormalities. Peter Firth's character has a worship that is more passionate and alive than most human beings ever feel-certainly more than Burton's character. Burton longs to have the boy's passion and yet realizes that he is trying to free the boy from these feelings as he is doing so. He muses over the meaning of his life and the therapy he gives. If he can never understand "why" a child acts the way it does, is there any point to therapy?

While this movie starts out with a completely absurd and twisted plot, it eventually fades into a very believable plot line. As Burton pulls the information from Firth's head and we witness the boy's instable home life and threatening religious background, the plot becomes normal and we come to understand the boy's situation. The movie becomes clear as the boy's troubles become clear. The effect of this is that we experience the therapy along with Peter Firth. This is masterfully done and Lumet should be applauded.

My only complaint about the movie is that it is a little long-winded. However, the dialogue is top-notch and the acting is incredible. If you're a fan of Richard Burton and his monologue performances driven by a play-adaptation, get this film.

The stableboy is
a monster who should have been put to death for his acts. The film is a horrible waste of time, and yet another example of the worst of the '70s attempts to show how a film adaptation of a novel and stage play can be put to the screen and still manage to rope in suckers and even win some awards. These types of films generally suck plain and simple, but this is among the notoriously worst of its kind. Would you care about the boys psychological make-up and rehibilitation if he had done this cruel act to a group of children? I think not. Richard Burton is better served in films such as 'Candy' and 'Bluebeard' - Stick to comedies, horror films and period pieces and forget this bogged down, heavyweight crappola! Sentimental poop! God rest Richard Burton's soul for this one!!

Two hours for: Boy tries to make love to girl but can't because he's a horseosexual. Boy blinds horses because they were in the barn when it happened, but out of eyeshot, if you'll pardon the expression. Richard Burton cures boy by getting him to spill story.

I kept watching the clock. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Richard Burton shines when playing cynical characters with acerbic wit. This was the wrong role for him -- he didn't shine.

Though "Equus" was masterful when seen on the broadway stage, it suffers dreadfully in this screen translation. It's curious because Sidney Lumet had a winning screen track record and Burton had honed his role as Dysart on the NY stage, after taking over the role from Tony Perkins. But something is sadly amiss here.

Some of the problems are the dank, sterile way in which many scenes were filmed. The viewer almost becomes claustrophic when Dysart interogates and analyzes the boy, ably played by Peter Firth. The sets seem absurdly cheap for such a production, with sofas, chairs and walls reminscent of something out of "General Hospital." The stable scene where Firth blinds the horses takes the concept of gratuitous violence to a new level. Again, this scene worked beautifuly on stage, but is numbing and troubling when viewed in the movie version.

Burton's performance was widely praised at the time of release and he was nominated for his seventh Academy Award. He didn't win (Richard Dreyfuss won instead). The performance is uneven and Burton never seems completely comfortable in the role. Ultimately, the viewer is confused with an overly avant-garde approach to the production and the fact that it's hard to care much for boy or his predicament. What was riveting on stage becomes a sadly boring psychological melodrama.

Hollywood gets mixed reviews on its ability to present plausible psychiatrist-patient relationships on film. On the tacky end of the scale are DAVID AND LISA and FINAL ANALYSIS; on the "deeply moving" end of the scale are ORDINARY PEOPLE and GOOD WILL HUNTING. Most, like THE THREE FACES OF EVE fall somewhere in the middle--interesting though unsubtle stories that reduce the patient's neurosis to a single mystery that needs to be unlocked by an indefatiguable professional who is egoless and has the blank personality to prove it.

Sidney Lumet's adaptation of the Peter Shaffer's stage play EQUUS is exceptional for its ability to transport to film the full emotional complexity and intensity of a psychiatrist's relationship with one of his patients. And this is done almost entirely through the skill of the actors: Richard Burton as the psychiatrist Dr. Martin Dysart, Peter Firth as the disturbed stable boy who inexplicably blinded several of the horses in his care, Colin Blakely and Joan Plowright as the boy's religiously incompatible parents, and Eileen Atkins as a judge who has asked Dr. Dysart to take on this challenging case. This is not to minimize other contributions--the cinematography is exceedingly intelligent and unobtrusive. It's simply to say that Lumet seems to have realized that he had assembled a dream cast and made every effort to stay out of their way and to let each actor shine. Burton's performance is perhaps the best of his film career. Though intense at times, he is completely devoid of the stagey "haminess" that has marred some of his other film performances. Firth, as the patient, moves easily from jingle-singing dissociated boy, to surly rebellious youth, to a sort of highly eroticized mythic being. It is truly fascinating to watch. Because the psychiatrist has issues of his own, and because the story is as much about his coming to terms with his own demons as with those of his patient, EQUUS is not your typical Hollywood psychotherapy movie. It delves into the mythology and religion as well as the human condition. In the end, the film gives you a lot to think about after you've hit the stop button on your remote. A disturbing but powerful film.

Absolutely stunning film version of the Tony-winning play. Richard Burton is fine as psychiatrist Dr.Dysart who tackles a disturbing case involving a young stablehand, Alan(Peter Firth) who has inexplicably blinded six horses. Alan has become obsessed with the mythological horse god Equus and secretly worships horses in religious/sexual frenzy. Dysart (who has problems of his own) tries to uncover what led up to the mutilations and discovers the boy's parents were aware of some of his strange rituals but coldly did nothing. Joan Plowright is excellent as the mother who reveals too late her own shortcomings. Beautiful Jenny Agutter is also fine as the girl whose seduction of Alan in the stables leads to the tragic occurrance... but Peter Firth is simply fantastic as the mentally fragile Alan. His performance carries the film and his role requires him to be nude through much of it. But titillating this is not. It is a wrenching film and the blinding of the horses is almost unbearable to watch. This is the kind of film that challenges the viewer and leaves much open for discussion. On that level alone, it is recommended highly. Others beware that the bizarre subject matter may put some viewers off. Nonetheless, it's an excellent film and an unusual journey into the psyche of a most unusual (and sad) young man. Excellent direction by Sidney Lumet. Rather "bare bones" DVD but it looks and sounds great. A collector's item.

I made the mistake of starting this movie late one evening, with the intention of only watching it for a while and finishing it later. Didn't work out that way...I found myself glued to the spot on the floor where I had sat after popping the tape in the VCR. The acting was simply incredible, although one of the aspects most fascinating to me was the transformation between play and screenplay and the different ways in which the same story was told. Deep stuff and a little freaky, but definitely an extraordinary piece of work that leaves you thinking.

This film has often been derided as lacking the emotional impact that the stage production contained (much of it deriving from the unconventional staging of the piece), but I think these criticisms are often misguided and, frankly, wrong.

The story is as strong as in the stage play: a burned-out psychiatrist (Richard Burton) takes on the case of a stable-boy (Peter Firth) who has blinded six of the horses in his care, and through his treatment of the boy, further exacerbating the psychiatrist's sense of detachment from the primitive side of his personality --a side he longs to be reunited with. In the process, we see how the twisted interrelation between sex, religion, guilt, parental love (or the absence thereof) and idolization (in most of its forms) combine to motivate an otherwise good teenager to commit such an act of cruelty.

The acting is absolutely flawless. Burton gives what may be the best performance of his career (and one which was inexplicably denied the Oscar) as the psychiatrist; Firth is his match as the inscrutable stable boy; and Jenny Agutter is superb as the young woman who unwittingly sets the final steps of the story in motion.

As for the complaints about the "staginess" of the film, Sidney Lumet's direction does a marvelous job at highlighting the contrasting personalities of Burton's and Firth's characters -- Burton's monologues shot in extreme close-up, highlighting the claustrophobic isolation into which his character has retreated; Firth, by contrast, given more leeway with the camera, only mirroring Burton's claustrophobia in those scenes in which his Freudian/religious guilt imposes itself upon him.

In short, Peter Shaffer's play is astounding material and it clearly survives its transition to film. Not a happy film, by any means, but certainly a brilliant one.