恋马狂

盛佳蓝光标注。Equus是拉丁语，对应的英文意思就是'horse'，中文翻译是“恋马狂。”最先知道这部舞台剧是媒体大肆报道的哈里·波特电影的主演、年仅17岁的丹尼尔将全裸出演本剧。

恋马狂的剧作者是沙费尔，其故事取材于真实事件，一名马童令人费解地戳瞎了6匹马的眼睛。“恋马”1973年第一次在国家大剧院演出时便引发轰动。在此之后，“恋马”转战美国百老汇，期间由安东尼·霍普金斯担任主角，上演次数达到1200余次，成为纽约历史上最为成功的戏剧之一。1977年，好莱坞将“恋马”改编成电影，本片获1978年金球奖最佳男主演，最佳男配角二项大奖及奥斯卡最佳男主演，最佳男配角，最佳改变剧本三项提名。

电影是从一位心理医生的回忆开始的。一位平时行为举止良好的17岁少年，突然刺瞎了他工作的马厩的6匹马的眼睛，正当他将面临法院审判的时候，一位在当地很有威望的心理医生主动提出愿意接受他到自己的诊所进行治疗，从而也帮助他躲过了其他惩罚。

心理医生用了很多方法希望这名少年能够说出他刺马前所有与马有关的经历，以帮助分析他令人费解的行为的根源。但最开始，这名少年一直隐藏自己的心事，什么都不愿意说出来。心理医生只有从他的亲人身上了解男孩的内心。从与他父母和他兼职的马场老板的交流中可以看出，男孩从小就受到父母严厉的管教，不让他接触周围世界的任何事物，他唯一了解世界的窗口就是从母亲口中听到的关于圣经的各种故事，和家里的关于他从事马术的舅舅的照片，唯一能给予他想象力的就只有他卧室床头的一幅耶稣受难的图片。这部电影的宗教意味太弄了，大部分的对话都是些很晦涩的宗教用语，所以在看的时候，自己很多东西都不能理解。

在男孩6岁的时候，父母带他到海边玩，一次偶然的机会他碰到了一位骑马的绅士，并且邀请他一起到马上来感受骑马的乐趣。当骑在马背上飞驰的时候，男孩第一次感受到了快乐和自由，但就在这时，他却被父亲严厉地斥责下了马。

从此男孩便对马这种生物疯狂的着了迷，同时，他从床头的耶稣受难图中似乎找到了其和马的共通之处。耶稣身上的枷锁就像马头上的缰绳一样，被人束缚和折磨；耶稣蓬乱的头发就像马的鬃毛；耶稣痛苦的表情就像马无助的神态；耶稣身后的广大民众组成的背景就像马奔跑的草原。他应经把马当成了上帝来看待，觉得马生来就受罪，一辈子就做人的奴隶，他要替他们受罪。于是在晚上的时候他经常对着一幅马的图片（他父亲将它床头的耶稣受难图片撕掉，认为这亵渎了神，他大哭大闹最后换上了一张马的图片后才安静下来），用缰绳将自己束缚，然后用马鞭抽打奴役自己。

后来男孩通过一个朋友介绍，找到了一份在养马场清理马厩的兼职，每个周末去工作两天。但是老板无意中发现，男孩经常在晚上牵着马出去，第二天马又照常在马厩里。心理医生用了催眠的方法，让男孩讲述他把晚上把马牵出去后的行动。男孩的潜意识一直在拒绝讲述这段经历，最后在医生的刺激下，他终于说出来：他喜欢全身裸体和马相抱，喜欢自己的脸颊靠着马脖子的感觉，喜欢赤裸裸地骑在马身上（网上都在说他裸体骑马是寻找性快感，我倒认为不是），喜欢感受在马奔驰的过程中自己和马融为一体的感觉，马就是他心中的GOD。

在马场长时间的工作后，他与另一位在那里工作的16岁女孩渐渐产生了感情。一天晚上，他们偷偷到电影院观看成人电影，男孩第一次看到了女人的裸体。就在这时，他父亲却又走进了电影院，发现了他的儿子。其实他父亲也是来电影院看这部电影的，但是为了避免尴尬，却假装说是来找这里的老板谈生意，大家彼此心照不宣。就在父亲叫他回家的时候，他勇敢挑战父亲的权威，跟着那个女孩跑回了马场。电影其实到这里已经做了很多铺垫了，接下来的情节就顺利成章的是男女身体接触了。这部电影还是比较大胆，男女都是六面全裸。但是马已经占据了他精神的全部，马就是他的上帝，在与女孩接吻的时候，他根本无法摆脱马在他脑子里的影响。他说：当我睁着眼睛，我就看到一只马隔在我们中间；但比上眼睛的时候，脑子里就全都是马的画面了，以至于我根本无法感受到她身体的存在。

马的形象作为上帝一直监视着他的活动，使他虽然极度渴望但却无法正常和女人交往，我想这个时候他刺伤马的眼睛也就不难理解了。

这部电影围绕性唤醒、希腊神话和宗教展开，只能看个半懂。其实我觉得造成他恋马的原因也很简单，就是家庭教育让他和外世隔绝了，再加上他母亲成天给他灌输的宗教思想。和马接触成了他唯一能够释放自己的方式，于是他就把马神化成了上帝。与其说是恋马，还不如说是worship the God。

电影还有一个有意思的地方，就是心理医生在治疗男孩的同时，也不断发现自己心里的阴暗面。在电影中他曾提到，已经很多年和妻子没有性生活了。以致在影片的医生独白部分，他都显得如此愤怒。还有就是电影让我看到了催眠术的恐怖一面，当他唤起人们痛苦回忆的时候，往往会让人濒临死亡的边缘。

虽然有喜欢的导演、编剧和主演，但是看得好累。

Transposing Peter Shaffer’s influential psychosexual play onto the celluloid, Sidney Lumet’s EQUUS notches up Richard Burton’s seventh and final Oscar nomination and puts a young Peter Firth on the map, who has been acted in the role in over one thousand times from Laurence Olivier's National Theatre to Broadway.

Burton plays married psychiatrist Martin Dysart, who works in a hospital for disturbed teenagers, his latest analysand is a 17-year-old Alan Strang (Firth), who, one night, blinds 6 horses in the stable where he moonlights during the weekends on the spur of the moment, and Martin takes it on himself to get the bottom of this misdeed.

It takes some time for a jingle-chanting Alan to open up to him, so Martin visits Alan’s parents Frank and Dora Strang (Blakely and Plowright) instead, to get a rough idea of what is wrong with their child, and one can always probe into a parent’s deportment to trace their influence on their impressible offspring, while Frank is a non-religious nonentity, Dora, the hand that rocks the cradle, has been persistently feeding Alan her Christian fundamentalist belief.

Since his first contact with a horse at the age of 6, Alan believes there is a deity “Equus” (latin for “horse”) inhabiting all the horses, and a fascination eventually morphs into erotic yearning in his adolescence. Although amatory feelings for a horse is too outré a proclivity to elicit empathy from audience, if one can apply Alan’s condition to nativistic homosexuality, surely we can find more common ground in our understanding, and become more appreciative of Martin’s ultimate lamenting of “taking away Allan’s pain and returning him to normalcy by neutering his ‘passion’ which he overtly envies”.

Proffered with profuse monologue to deliver, a slightly haggard Richard Burton revels in his last hurrah with pluperfect elocution and genuine sympathy, fenced within a dead-end marriage and deviled by his Hellenic nightmares, Martin’s professional facade starts to totter when he becomes increasingly bewitched by Alan’s perfervid devotion to his fantastic construct about horses, Burton is rarely that good. But in the event, it is Peter Firth who gives his much venerated co-star a run for his money, not least for his intrepidity to bare it all (both physically and emotionally) in honing up Alan’s stunted development: dazed perplex, infantile petulance, disquieted mindset and unbridled elation, during their respective stages in the whole package of a soul-shattering leading performance (yes, he is Oscar-nominated for the supporting category, a shaft is also given to Burton for his breakthrough role in Henry Koster’s MY COUSIN RACHLE, quarter of a century ago).

Secondary players are also indomitably excellent, Colin Blakely emits arguably the most tormented gaze ever when his Frank inadvertently witnesses his son’s deviation; Joan Ploweright heartrendingly holds court as a mother who cites demonology in her utter despair; Jenny Agutter won a BAFTA more for her moxie of undressing than her underdeveloped character Jill Mason, who has the guts to invite a boy to watch a Swedish skin flick, but cannot sense that he might not be entirely compos mentis; and finally, Eileen Atkins in her very early movie role, as the magistrate who introduces Alan to Martin and has a platonic friendship with the latter, although mostly appears to repeatedly make Martin feel good about himself, her fierce glare and undivided compassion subtly suggests that she is one of his betters.

Alternating between Martin and Alan’s quotidian sessions which often lead to the latter’ss own flashback and Martin’s own quest for truth outside the hospital, Lumet marshals a compulsive treatise not merely about a young man’s suppressed sexuality and profound humiliation of erectile dysfunction, but also mirrors an elder man’s deep-seated trepidation of his diminishing potency, with an audacity rarely seen on the USA screen, for instance, the money shot where Alan performs his ritual in the raw with a horse during the wee hours on a field, is uncannily numinous and perversely beauteous, then there are those in-your-face, fast-edited montage of blinding a horse with a sickle and its bloody coda, never a psychodrama dares to go rapier-like in both its subject and vision, manna from heaven, that is what Sidney Lumet’s EQUUS is.

referential entries: Lumet’s THE VERDICT (1982, 7.7/10), 12 ANGRY MEN (1957, 9.0/10); Brian De Palma’s CARRIE (1976, 8.1/10).