Equus
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Short description
Equus is a drama set largely around a Hampshire stable, where a shocking act of cruelty has taken place: six horses have been blinded with a metal spike. The culprit is Alan Strang, a quiet seventeen-year-old who works with the animals. A psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, takes on the case, tasked by the court with finding out why the boy did it. As he questions Alan's parents, his employer and eventually Alan himself, Dysart pieces together a private world shaped by religious fervour and a personal mythology centred on horses. The inquiry into the boy's mind unsettles the doctor, who begins to measure his own life against the intensity of his patient's obsessions.
Sidney Lumet directed the film, the twelfth of the twenty-six features he made in chronological order, arriving between Network and The Wiz. Peter Shaffer adapted his own play for the screen, and Elliott Kastner and Lester Persky produced. Richard Burton plays Dysart, with Peter Firth as Alan, and the cast includes Joan Plowright, Colin Blakely, Harry Andrews and Eileen Atkins.
Released in October 1977, the film runs 137 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.1 from around 9,200 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 7 from roughly 145 votes. A critics' score of 6.2 from twenty-three reviews places it below the audience response.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film is based on the play of the same name by Peter Shaffer (1973).
- Due to tax issues, the film was shot in Canada. This is why actress Joan Plowright was unable to accompany her husband, Sir Laurence Olivier, to the opening of the National Theatre of Great Britain on October 25, 1976.
- Richard Burton rejected the initial choice for the role of Alan Strang, telling the producers that the actor was too tall. He insisted on Peter Firth, who had already played the role in the Broadway production of the play in April 1976, as he was roughly the same height as Burton. The producers, in turn, were initially reluctant to cast him as Martin Dysart due to the actor's alcoholism and overacting. The media reported interest from Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson. Burton had to star in John Boorman's horror film "Exorcist II: The Heretic" (1977) to "sweeten the deal" with the producers.
- Screenwriter Peter Shaffer was frightened by the method director Sidney Lumet used to film the final scene in the stables. It reminded him of the famous shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "Psycho" (1960).
- Due to filming "Equus", Peter Firth had to decline the lead role in Tinto Brass's large-scale erotic drama "Caligula" (1979), where he was replaced by his co-star from " Aces High" (1976) Malcolm McDowell. Firth himself appears fully nude three times in the film, and the final scene in the stables is considered the longest in mainstream cinema to show male frontal nudity.
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