Peter Shaffer's screenplay ought to have made a fascinating and puzzling story although, to be sure, this isn't director Sidney Lumet's usual territory. Lumet handles torment deftly enough but the torment is found in New York City.
Here, the setting is England, and Lumet does his best, as do the performers, but it seems to me that they're all hobbled by a screenplay that mixes all kinds of confused metaphysics with some extraordinary psychopathology.
Peter Firth plays a rather ordinary English lad who has been fascinated by horses since childhood. Okay, lots of girls find horses sexy, but Firth's equipoise is such that he's obsessed with them and loses touch with the humdrum world of his family and friends. He worships these dumb brutes.
He's confined to a funny farm after a savage attack on half a dozen horses at the stable he works in -- a scene based on a real incident. Under the care of Richard Burton, a psychiatrist, he reveals, little by little, the developments that led up to this heinous act.
Briefly, he's come to think of horses as some kind of Godhead. He fantasizes about stripping naked and riding them through the night, sharing food with them, caressing them, freeing them from their chains even through self sacrifice.
Then he's confronted by a posh girl at the stables named Jill. She's played by Jenny Agutter. Agutter's tastes run more to the physical than the theological. She's attracted to him and tries to seduce him in the loft of the stable, while the horses below snuffle and stomp. Now, Jenny Agutter is a very attractive young lady with the face of an Alien from outer space and a figure at once sinewy and voluptuous. Firth is a guy who can get off by thinking about riding horses bareback and in the nude, but he can't manage to be turgid while making love to Agutter. Right away, we're convinced this kid is really sick.
All the while he's writhing on top of her, he's thinking about the horses. He believes they're staring at him. You know, "Our God is a jealous God"? So he throws out the naked Agutter and puts out the eyes of the horses.
And what is Doctor Burton's response to all this? He's JEALOUS of the kid's passion! His own life is that of an urban bourgeois. He's been married to the same sensible woman for years and theirs has become what family therapists call a companionate marriage. Her job is to run the comfortable house. His job is to make the salad while she prepares dinner. He feels his life lacks ardor because he doesn't suffer from transcendental zoophilia.
There are a few striking moments in the film: (1) when Firth goes for his first pony ride at the beach; (2) a nicely photographed scene when Firth gallops a horse through the fields and evidently ejaculates; (3) the fully nude episode with Jenny Agutter in the loft; and (4) the monstrous attack on the innocent horses.
The rest is talk. Fully blown talk, elegant in grammar and imagery, not at all like the garden-variety speech that people use in everyday life. For my taste, admittedly warped, there are too many scenes of Richard Burton looming over his recalcitrant patient and shouting, "TELL me!" Burton does the best he can. His voice is incomparable but the character is so sullen that his presence brings little joy to the screen. Firth has the juiciest part.
The model of psychosis we see in this movie is supposed to be based on an historical incident but, man, does it romanticize madness. Firth's character doesn't do any of the things that ordinary psychotics do. His gibberish is the gibberish of James Joyce in "Finnegans Wake." The only REALLY odd thing he does, aside from spurning Agutter, is to blind those horses. He doesn't go about in tattered clothing. He doesn't speak to himself. He doesn't masturbate in public. He's lively and clever, rather than flat and empty.
I wonder, too, if some of the story is at least in part a joke from the author. Peter Shaffer, the playwright, has a twin brother Anthony who also writes plays ("Sleuth"). And Firth's mother has a line in which she attributes Firth's initial fascination with horses to the fact that their genus is "Equus" and the kid had never seen a word with "two yous" before. Well, with "Equus" on one side and "Sleuth" on the other, the equupoise is nearly perfect.
Here, the setting is England, and Lumet does his best, as do the performers, but it seems to me that they're all hobbled by a screenplay that mixes all kinds of confused metaphysics with some extraordinary psychopathology.
Peter Firth plays a rather ordinary English lad who has been fascinated by horses since childhood. Okay, lots of girls find horses sexy, but Firth's equipoise is such that he's obsessed with them and loses touch with the humdrum world of his family and friends. He worships these dumb brutes.
He's confined to a funny farm after a savage attack on half a dozen horses at the stable he works in -- a scene based on a real incident. Under the care of Richard Burton, a psychiatrist, he reveals, little by little, the developments that led up to this heinous act.
Briefly, he's come to think of horses as some kind of Godhead. He fantasizes about stripping naked and riding them through the night, sharing food with them, caressing them, freeing them from their chains even through self sacrifice.
Then he's confronted by a posh girl at the stables named Jill. She's played by Jenny Agutter. Agutter's tastes run more to the physical than the theological. She's attracted to him and tries to seduce him in the loft of the stable, while the horses below snuffle and stomp. Now, Jenny Agutter is a very attractive young lady with the face of an Alien from outer space and a figure at once sinewy and voluptuous. Firth is a guy who can get off by thinking about riding horses bareback and in the nude, but he can't manage to be turgid while making love to Agutter. Right away, we're convinced this kid is really sick.
All the while he's writhing on top of her, he's thinking about the horses. He believes they're staring at him. You know, "Our God is a jealous God"? So he throws out the naked Agutter and puts out the eyes of the horses.
And what is Doctor Burton's response to all this? He's JEALOUS of the kid's passion! His own life is that of an urban bourgeois. He's been married to the same sensible woman for years and theirs has become what family therapists call a companionate marriage. Her job is to run the comfortable house. His job is to make the salad while she prepares dinner. He feels his life lacks ardor because he doesn't suffer from transcendental zoophilia.
There are a few striking moments in the film: (1) when Firth goes for his first pony ride at the beach; (2) a nicely photographed scene when Firth gallops a horse through the fields and evidently ejaculates; (3) the fully nude episode with Jenny Agutter in the loft; and (4) the monstrous attack on the innocent horses.
The rest is talk. Fully blown talk, elegant in grammar and imagery, not at all like the garden-variety speech that people use in everyday life. For my taste, admittedly warped, there are too many scenes of Richard Burton looming over his recalcitrant patient and shouting, "TELL me!" Burton does the best he can. His voice is incomparable but the character is so sullen that his presence brings little joy to the screen. Firth has the juiciest part.
The model of psychosis we see in this movie is supposed to be based on an historical incident but, man, does it romanticize madness. Firth's character doesn't do any of the things that ordinary psychotics do. His gibberish is the gibberish of James Joyce in "Finnegans Wake." The only REALLY odd thing he does, aside from spurning Agutter, is to blind those horses. He doesn't go about in tattered clothing. He doesn't speak to himself. He doesn't masturbate in public. He's lively and clever, rather than flat and empty.
I wonder, too, if some of the story is at least in part a joke from the author. Peter Shaffer, the playwright, has a twin brother Anthony who also writes plays ("Sleuth"). And Firth's mother has a line in which she attributes Firth's initial fascination with horses to the fact that their genus is "Equus" and the kid had never seen a word with "two yous" before. Well, with "Equus" on one side and "Sleuth" on the other, the equupoise is nearly perfect.