On stage, Peter Shaffer's play Equus can have as powerful an impact as his Amadeus. It loses something in this screen translation, however, precisely because it is too reverential towards the theatrical text.
Even Richard Burton, talking straight to camera, can't bring a properly cinematic dimension to the monologues, while his scenes with Peter Firth the young patient his psychiatrist is treating after a horse-blinding incident are hemmed in and theatrically stylised.
The mix of repressed sexual desire and religion at the root of the boy's problems feels a little clichéd today; but when Shaffer's writing hits its peaks, his genius shines through Sidney Lumet's unadventurous staging.
