” It’s not an easy watch, and its theatrical origins are very visible, but the performances and ideas give it lasting force.
59% ★★★☆☆ (15,333)
Equus
Where to watch: Buy
Movie · Drama · Mystery · R
1977 · 2h 17m · ★ 59% (15.3K)
I am yours and you are mine.
Director: Sidney Lumet
Starring: Richard Burton, Peter Firth, Joan Plowright
Overview
A psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, investigates the savage blinding of six horses with a metal spike in a stable in Hampshire, England. The atrocity was committed by an unassuming seventeen-year-old stable boy named Alan Strang, the only son of an opinionated but inwardly-timid father and a genteel, religious mother. As Dysart exposes the truths behind the boy's demons, he finds himself face-to-face with his own.
Director
Sidney Lumet
Production
United Artists, Persky-Bright Productions, Winkast Film Productions
Cast
Richard Burton, Peter Firth, Joan Plowright, Harry Andrews, Colin Blakely, Eileen Atkins, Jenny Agutter, Kate Reid, John Wyman, Elva Mai Hoover, Patrick Brymer, Ken James
Curator Review
Verdict
A strange, unsettling psychological drama that turns a sensational premise into a serious inquiry about repression, faith, sexuality, and the cost of “normality.” It’s not an easy watch, and its theatrical origins are very visible, but the performances and ideas give it lasting force.
Best for
viewers who like intense psychological dramas
fans of stage-to-screen adaptations
people interested in psychoanalysis, repression, and religious imagery
audiences who don’t mind a deliberately uncomfortable, talk-heavy film
Skip if
you want a fast-moving thriller
you prefer naturalistic realism over heightened theatricality
animal cruelty imagery is a dealbreaker
you’re looking for a conventional mystery with neat answers
Overview
Equus is the kind of film that starts as a case study and ends as a moral provocation. Sidney Lumet stages Peter Shaffer’s play with a stern, probing intelligence, letting the mystery of Alan Strang’s violence open into something much larger: a clash between desire and discipline, worship and shame, freedom and the social demand to be “normal.”
Worth noting
Richard Burton gives the film its gravity, playing Dr. Dysart as a man who is both investigator and patient. The movie’s most unsettling idea is not the boy’s obsession, but the doctor’s envy of it — the possibility that passion, however damaged, may be more alive than a properly managed life.
Bottom line
The film can feel rigid, even over-literal, in places, and its theatrical roots are impossible to miss. But that severity is also part of its power. Equus is less interested in plot mechanics than in the psychic aftershocks of trauma, and it lingers because it refuses to make those wounds simple or tidy.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine (4★) · 123 likes
Action! - Lumet/Pollack: The Fight of the Century When I got up this morning, the last thing I expected (or wanted) to watch was a disturbing film about a nutcase maniacal lover of Un Chien Andalou and horses. And, ladies and gentlemen, when I say horse lover, I mean it in a highly sexual manner, complete with a quasi-bestiality sequence that isn't precisely graphic but is extremely suggestive. Either Peter Firth is a fantastic actor, or this film left scars… more
Sam (4★) · 88 likes
Equus is a pretty intense lumet film and certainly an odd diversion from his previous feature being Network. It’s mainly a slow burn psychological drama similar to the offence but mainly only down to the aspect of exploring a certain mindset linked to insanity and what events can send an Individual down a certain path. The synopsis makes the film sound increasingly odd dealing with Richard burtons character trying to find why his patient has blinded a stable full of… more
Josh Gillam (4★) · 81 likes
Troubled psychiatrist Dr Dysart (Richard Burton) treats a teenager (Peter Firth) who has blinded a stable full of horses, discovering some of his own inner demons in the process, in Sidney Lumet’s psychological drama based on Peter Schaffer’s play with Joan Plowright, Colin Blakeley and Jenny Agutter. Burton spent most of the seventies appearing in a lot of mediocre movies to pay the bills, but got one last triumph here in what would turn out to be his final Oscar-nominated… more
🇵🇱 Steve G 🐝 (4★) · 79 likes
Perhaps the biggest challenge I face as a parent is trying not to impose too much of myself on my children. There has been many a time I have chastised myself for doing it. Particularly since my eldest daughter started mainlining programmes off the Disney Channel. The last thing I want to be is one of those parents who is all like, "Ugh, TV was soooo much better in my day!" because if you become one of those people then… more
Ben Hibburd (2★) · 61 likes
This was a weird film; I still don't really know what to make of it. "Equus" is directed by Sidney Lumet and is an adaptation of the original stage play. The story is centred on an extremely repressed individual who has a strange (kinda sexual) obsession with a horse. After a violent experience in a stable, the film spends the next two hours of its run-time exploring his issues with a therapist, peeling back all his layers. As a stage… more