Equus

Alan Strang blinds six horses with a sickle, shocking spectators and the hospital staff. Magistrate Hesther Salomon then asks her platonic friend Martin Dysart to treat the troubled boy. Dysart accepts, sensing a chance to understand the price of healing.

Dysart visits the Strang family home to meet Frank and Dora and to glean the family dynamics behind Alan's actions. He begins to understand how religious and secular forces shape the boy's worldview. The meeting launches the therapy process that will follow.

Dora describes her Christian fundamentalist upbringing and her view that God watches all. She taught Alan basics about sex and morality, but he later replaces her with his own deity, Equus. The clash between her teachings and Alan's inner god becomes a central theme in Dysart's sessions.

Frank tells Dysart that he saw Alan late at night in his room haltered and flagellating himself while chanting a chain of Biblical names that ends with Equus. He remarks on the disturbing ritual and the impact on his son. The confession deepens Dysart's sense that Alan's passion has become dangerous.

Alan recounts his earliest memory of a horse named Trojan when he was six. He recalls a man approaching on horseback and the horse speaking to him, declaring that Equus is the true name of all horses. The memory blends thrill with fear and foreshadows the boy's fixation.

The stable manager explains that Alan secured his job through another employee named Jill, who is currently on medical leave due to injuries she indirectly caused. The revelation hints at Jill's influence over Alan and the unstable context of the stables. Dysart begins to map the web of relationships around the boy.

Alan admits to secretly riding horses at night nude, chanting prayers to Equus until he reaches orgasm and then caressing them. Dysart senses a fierce pagan passion behind the boy's actions, contrasting with his own sterile life. The confession marks a turning point in the therapist's view of Alan's humanity and danger.

Dysart confesses that he envies Alan's passionate paganism and that his own life feels emotionally numb. He experiences troubling dreams of ritual slaughter in Homeric Greece while wearing the Mask of Agamemnon. The dreams blur the line between clinical distance and personal fantasy.

One evening Jill persuades Alan to attend a pornographic film at a local cinema, where he unexpectedly encounters his father and is forced to leave. The encounter exposes the collision of family authority with forbidden desire. The incident deepens Alan's sense of exposure and guilt.

Back at the stables, Jill removes her clothing and offers Alan sex, but he cannot perform. She is compassionate but ultimately tells him to leave, leaving him naked and humiliated. The scene crystallizes the conflict between burgeoning sexual longing and strict moral codes.

Tormented by Equus and his own inner turmoil, Alan blinds the horses in the stable yard. The act is the culmination of his indulgence and fear, and it triggers Dysart's crisis about what healing really costs. The community is left to confront the consequences.

Dysart is left unsettled by the possibility that curing Alan might strip away his painful passion, potentially leaving the boy—and himself—emotionally neutered. He weighs the moral cost of therapy against the harm of not healing. The film closes with a quiet meditation on what it means to truly heal.