Equus (1977)

Richard Burton: Martin Dysart

Photos 

Quotes 

• Martin Dysart : Moments snap together like magnets forged in a chain of shackles. Why? I can trace them, I can even with time pull them apart again. But why at the start were they ever magnetized at all. Why those particular moments of experience and no others, I do not know! And nor does ANY BODY ELSE! And if *I* don't know, if I can *never* know, what am I doing here? I don't mean clinically doing, or socially doing, but fundamentally. These whys, these questions, are fundamental. Yet they have no place in a consulting room. So then do I? Do any of us?

• [last lines] 

  Martin Dysart : But, now, for me, it never stops. The voice of Equus. Out of the cave. Why me? Why me? First, account for me. How can I? In an ultimate sense I cannot know what I do in this place, but I do ultimate things, irreversible things. And I, I stand in the dark with a blade in my hand, striking at heads. I need, more desperately than my children need me, a way of seeing in the dark. What way is this? What dark in this? I cannot fully ordain but God! I cannot go so far! I will however, pay so much hardship. There is now in my mouth this sharp chafe. It never comes out.

• Martin Dysart : That's what his stare has been saying to me all this time: 'At least I galloped - when did you?'

• [first lines] 

  Martin Dysart : Afterward he says, they always embrace. The animal digs his sweaty brow into his cheek, and they stand in the dark for an hour, like a naked couple. And of all nonsensical things, I keep thinking about the horse, not the boy. The horse and what he might be trying to do. I keep seeing the huge head, kissing him with its chained mouth, nudging from the metal some desire absolutely irrelevant to fulfilling its bearing or propagating its own kind. What desire could this be? Not to stay a horse any longer, not to remain reigned up forever in those particular genetic strengths. Is it possible that at certain moments, we can not imagine, the horse can add its sufferings together, the nonstop jibs and jabs that are its daily life, and turn them into grief? What use is grief - to a horse? You see, I'm lost.

• Martin Dysart : Worship all you can see, and more will appear.

• Martin Dysart : Passion, you see, can be destroyed by a doctor. It cannot be created.

• Martin Dysart : All right! The normal is the good smile in a child's eyes. There's also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills, like a god. It is the ordinary made beautiful, it is also the average made lethal. Normal is the indispensable murderous god of health and I am his priest.

• Martin Dysart : You have a special dream?

  Alan Strang : No. You?

  Martin Dysart : Yes - what was your dream about last night?

  Alan Strang : Can't remember - what was *yours* about?

  Martin Dysart : I said the truth!

  Alan Strang : That *is* the truth. What was yours about, the special one?

  Martin Dysart : [matter-of-factly]  Carving up children.

• Martin Dysart : The thing is, I'm wearing that horse's head, myself. All reigned up in old language and old assumptions, straining to jump, clean hoofed onto a holding track of being, I only suspect is there. I can't see it because my educated, average head is being held at the wrong angle, I can't jump because the bit forbids it. My own basic force, my - horsepower - if you like, is too little.

• Dora Strang : Alan always adored horses. In fact, we've always been a horsey family. Well, my side has. My uncle used to ride every morning on the downs behind Brighton, all dressed up in a bowler hat and jodhpurs. He used to look splendid. Indulging in equitation, he called it. I remember telling Alan how that word came from equus.

  Martin Dysart : Equus?

  Dora Strang : The latin word for horse. Alan was absolutely fascinated by that word, I know. I suppose, because he'd never come across one with two "u"s together before.

• Martin Dysart : What do you do now?

  Alan Strang : Touch him.

  Martin Dysart : Where?

  Alan Strang : All over. Belly. Ribs. His ribs are of ivory - with great value. His flank is cool. His nostrils open for me. His eyes shine. They can see.

• Martin Dysart : She sits and knits things for orphans in some home she works with and I sit opposite turning over the pages of books on mythical Greece. Mentally we're in different parts of the world. She's forever in some drizzly chapel of her own inheriting and I'm in some Doric temple, clouds tearing through the pillars, eagles baring prophecies out of the sky. She finds all that repulsive. All of my wife has ever taken from the Mediterranean, from that whole vast intuitive culture, are four bottles of Chianti to make into lamps and two china condiment donkeys labeled Sally and Pepe.

• Martin Dysart : Go on, what then?

  Alan Strang : Sugar.

  Martin Dysart : Lump sugar?

  Alan Strang : The last supper.

  Martin Dysart : Last before what?

  Alan Strang : Ha, ha.

  Martin Dysart : You say anything when you give it to him?

  Alan Strang : "Take my sins. Eat them, for my sake."

• Martin Dysart : Go on, ahead, mount him.

  Alan Strang : "Into my hands, he commends himself. Naked in his jingle jangle. Equus. Equus! Equus! Take me!"

• Martin Dysart : I wish - there was somebody in this life I could show - one, instinctive, absolutely un-brisk person that I could take to Greece and stand in front of certain shrines and sacred streams and say, "Look, life is only comprehensible through a thousand - local gods." Not just the old dead gods, with names like Zeus; but, living geniuses of place and person. Not just Greece, but, modern England. Here. Spirits of certain - trees, of certain curves of brick wall, of certain fish and chip shops, if you like, and slate roofs and frowns in people, slouches. I'd say to them, "Worship! All you can see. And more will appear."

• Martin Dysart : I'm talking about passion, Heather. Do you know what that word meant originally? Suffering. The way you get your own spirit through your own suffering. Self-chosen. Self-made. This boy's done that. He's created his own desperate ceremony just, just to, just to ignite one flame of original ecstasy in a spiritless wasteland around him. Alright. He's destroyed for it. Horribly. He's virtually destroyed by it! But, one thing I know for sure, that boy has known a passion more ferocious than I have known in any second of my life. Let me tell you something, I envy it!

• Martin Dysart : Three weeks a year, in the Mediterranean. Every bed booked in advance. Every meeting paid for with vouchers. Cautious George and hired cars. Suitcase, crammed with kaopectate. What a fantastic surrender to the primitive! And the primitive, I use that word endlessly. Ah, the primitive world, I say, what instinctual truths were lost with it?

• Martin Dysart : There is now, in my mouth, this sharp chain - and it never comes out.

• Martin Dysart : When Equus leaves, if he leaves at all, it will be with your intestines in his teeth - and I don't stock replacements.

• Martin Dysart : He won't gallop anymore, and - horses will be quite safe.

• Martin Dysart : Mr. Strang, exactly how informed would you judge your son to be about sex?

  Frank Strang : I don't know.

  Martin Dysart : You didn't actually instruct him yourself?

  Frank Strang : Not in so many words. No.

  Martin Dysart : Did you Mrs. Strang?

  Dora Strang : Well, I spoke a little. Yes. I had to.

  Martin Dysart : What sort of things did you tell him? I'm sorry if this is embarrassing.

  Dora Strang : I told him the biological facts. But, I also told him what I believed. That sex is not just a biological matter; but, a spiritual one as well. If God willed, he would fall in love one day. Sugar? That his task was to prepare himself for the most important happening of his life. And after that, if he was lucky, he would come to know a higher love still.

  [Drops tea pot and breaks down crying] 

• Alan Strang : It's gentle Equus. Meek and mild. At least, till the field.

  Martin Dysart : What field?

  Alan Strang : Ha, ha!

  Martin Dysart : What?

  Alan Strang : The field of Ha, ha! Then, there's trouble!

  Martin Dysart : What kind?

  Alan Strang : He won't go in!

  Martin Dysart : Make him go into it. Is it a good field?

  Alan Strang : It's perfect. Full of rubbish. Electrical and kitchen ware. It's covered with metals - upon your feet.

  Martin Dysart : Take your shoes off?

  Alan Strang : Everything.

  Martin Dysart : All your clothes?

  Alan Strang : Yes.

• Martin Dysart : Now, I want you to think back in time. You're on that beach you told me about. You're six. Above you, staring down at you, is that great horse''s head. Can you see that?

  Alan Strang : Yes.

  Martin Dysart : You ask him a question, "Does the chain hurt?"

  Alan Strang : Yes.

  Martin Dysart : Do you ask him aloud?

  Alan Strang : No.

  Martin Dysart : And what does the horse say back?

  Alan Strang : "Yes."

  Martin Dysart : What do you say?

  Alan Strang : "I'll take it out for you."

  Martin Dysart : And he says?

  Alan Strang : "It never comes out. They have me in chains."

  Martin Dysart : Like Jesus?

  Alan Strang : Yes.

  Martin Dysart : Only, his name's not Jesus.

  Alan Strang : No.

  Martin Dysart : What is it?

  Alan Strang : It's Equus.

  Martin Dysart : Equus. Does he live in all horses? Or, just some?

  Alan Strang : All.

• Martin Dysart : Tell me, why is Equus in chains?

  Alan Strang : For the sins of the world.

  Martin Dysart : What's he say to you?

  Alan Strang : "I see you. I will save you."

  Martin Dysart : How?

  Alan Strang : "Bare you away. Two shall be one."

  Martin Dysart : Horse and rider shall be one beast?

  Alan Strang : One person.

• Martin Dysart : There he spoke to you, didn't he? He looked at you with his gentle eyes and he spake unto you.

  Alan Strang : Yes.

  Martin Dysart : What did he say? Ride me? Mount me and ride me forth in the night?

  Alan Strang : Yes.

  Martin Dysart : You obeyed?

  Alan Strang : Yes.

  Martin Dysart : How did you learn? By watching others?

  Alan Strang : Yes.

  Martin Dysart : It must have been difficult. You bounced about.

  Alan Strang : Yes.

  Martin Dysart : But he taught you, didn't he? Equus showed you the way.

  Alan Strang : No!

  Martin Dysart : He didn't?

  Alan Strang : He showed me nothing. He's a mean bugger! Ride or fall, that's straw law.

  Martin Dysart : Straw law?

  Alan Strang : [singing]  He was born in the straw, this is his law...

• Martin Dysart : I want to hear about that film.

  Alan Strang : What? What? It was bloody awful!

  Martin Dysart : Why?

  Alan Strang : Nosey Parker!

  Martin Dysart : Why?

  Alan Strang : Because.

  Martin Dysart : Yes?

  Alan Strang : The whole place was full of men. Jill was the only girl. It was daft. It all took place in Sweden. There was this girl, Britta, who was 16. She wanted to stay in this house where there was this older boy. He kept giving her looks. But, she ignored him completely. Instead, she took a shower. She went into the bathroom, took off all her clothes. The lot, very, very slowly. It was fantastic. Water fell down her, bouncing off her breasts.

  Martin Dysart : Is that the first time you'd ever seen a girl naked?

  Alan Strang : Yes. You couldn't see everything though. It was funny. All around me, all the men were staring, like they were in a church. Like a secret congregation. Like those early Christians, my Mom talks about. The ones that came together in caves underground.

• Martin Dysart : What's in your head?

  Alan Strang : Her eyes. I keep looking at them because I really wanted - I really wanted...

  Martin Dysart : To look at her breasts.

  Alan Strang : Yes.

• Dora Strang : I do remember telling him a very odd thing. Did you know, doctor, that when the Christian calvary first appeared in the new world, the pagans thought that horse and rider was one person.

  Martin Dysart : One person?

  Dora Strang : Yes.

  Martin Dysart : A horse?

  Dora Strang : Actually, they thought it must be a god.

• Martin Dysart : Mrs. Strang, is there anything else you can remember that you told him about horses? Anything at all?

  Dora Strang : Oh, well, they're in the Bible, of course. "He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha."

  Martin Dysart : Ha, ha?

  Dora Strang : The Book of Job. Such a noble passage. You know? "Hath thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? The glory of his nostrils is terrible. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha!"

  Martin Dysart : That's marvelous.

  Dora Strang : Yes.

• Martin Dysart : While I sit there, baiting that poor, unimaginative woman, with a word, that freaky boy is trying to conjure the reality. I look at pages of centaurs, trampling the soil of Argos and outside my window that boy is trying to become one in a Hampshire field. I sit there, night after night, watching that woman knitting, a woman I haven't kissed in six years! And he stands for an hour in the dark, sucking the sweat off his god's hairy cheek. Then, in the morning, I put away my books on the couch or shelf, close up my Kodachrome snaps of Mount Olympus, touch my reproduction statue of Dionysus, for luck, and go off to the hospital to treat - him - for insanity.