EQUUS

Oh. My. God.

Equus is a prime example of what happens when creepy, overprotective parents drum a lot of talk about religion into a kid's head, then give him a room way up on the third floor. That kid is entirely likely to develop an obsession with the first thing he associates with freedom—in this case horses—and by age seventeen he's sure to be an even bigger dork than Napoleon Dynamite. Pretty soon he's fashioning himself a bridle out of string, spurring himself along with a coat hanger. The next thing you know, he's sneaking naked horseback rides at the dump in the middle of the night, pretending he's a centaur. Somehow horses, Jesus, and girls are all mixed up in his mind, and when Jenny Agutter takes off all her clothes for a roll in the hay, the inevitable occurs: he puts out the eyes of six horses with a metal spike. Oh. My. God.

What do we do about a kid like this? Call Richard Burton, of course! He's an excellent psychiatrist who's able to win the boy's trust, meet his challenges, and sleuth his way to the root of the problem. He can fix this "freaky boy" just as surely as the boy can break him.

This is the interesting part of Equus - in treating the young man, Dr. Dysart begins to question himself. He realizes that his job hinges on pretending to be an expert on unknowable aspects of the human mind. He begins to see himself as a butcher, carving the passion and individuality out of children, leaving them dead-eyed, "normal" adults.

Dr. Dysart has lived a safe life, full of intellectualized passions and compartmentalized details. It is a life full of nothing, as he sees it, an he can't help feeling like a fraud. Who is he to try to fix a boy with more passion for a god of his own invention (Equus) than he's ever felt about anything? Though the boy may no longer be haunted by Equus when Dr. Dysart gets through with him, Dr. Dysart certainly will.

At the core of Equus lie several interesting questions regarding forms of worship, the definition of normal, the nature of hypocrisy, and the validity of psychiatry. It's all worth thinking about, but I'm sure we could do it better without actually reliving the patient's case history in graphic detail. Some things are better left to the imagination—like a naked guy getting funny with a horse, a naked guy getting funny with Jenny Agutter (don't her clothes fall off in Logan's Run too?), or a naked guy showered in the eye guts of his favorite animal.

Even though it was written by the man who gave us Amadeus, and directed by the man who gave us Serpico, Richard Burton is truly the only palatable thing about Equus. I watched the movie solely to see him, but the second he left the screen, I started to feel as though I'd been abandoned in a nightmare. For the first three-quarters of the film, he's there consistently, like the voice of reason. He's funny, compassionate, and hell, he's Richard Burton—that voice, those eyes, those hands! I bet there aren't many girls with English degrees who don't think he's hot. He's even Al Pacino's favorite actor, but he can't save Equus.

By the end of the film, I had knots in my stomach and my finger on the trigger, er, fast forward button. Naked kid—zzz. Richard Burton—play. Naked kid—zzz. Richard Burton—play. I'm still not entirely sure why the kid blinded those horses, but I know now that he didn't do it with a mental spike, as I first thought when I read the back of the video box. It's kind of a bummer really, because with mental spikes we might have wound up with something more like Firestarter than this weird foray into Horse Horror or Horse Porn. Whichever you choose to call it, you can bet it'll be the only movie in that department of the video store. That's a very good thing.