Word: strangeness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Whose Life Is It Anyway? The strang est objects in New York theaters this sea son are plays that might be labeled terminal comedy cases. They highlight people who defend with their wit and ironic quips the right to die. This is the best of those plays, and Tom Conti, paralyzed from the neck down, is the most at tractive antihero in that we root for his decision to die and mourn the imminent loss of a vitally amusing friend at the same time...
Danny and Bernie (Peter Kovner and Joseph Wilkins) are two office buddies who wind up competing for the wildest story and cruelest screw, as their two female counterparts, Deborah and Joan (Deborah Strang and Laura Hepner) feed on each other's disillusionment...
...acting, with the exception of Strang and Wilkins, is overdone and the delicate, sincere moments are lost in superficial sighs. Strang is convincing, making her presence in the drama count, and the overblown Wilkins (no pun intended) can never really overact the part of an asshole as intolerable as Bernie...
...expected from a movie based on a play bursting with totem-like symbols, Equus is studded with the type of rich imagery that will easily come to mind with the mere mention of the film's title. Many viewers of Equus will fasten onto the scene of the nude Strang riding a madly galloping steed, a union of man and beast thrown into relief by backgrounds that alternate between the darkest of nights and a blinding brilliance of light. But the segment that qualifies as Lumet's tour de force lies elsewhere, in the scene showing Strang's brutal rampage...
This graphic display of savagery is one of several similar scenes that have appalled viewers of Equus who prefer the tamer stage version of the work. An equally testing juncture shows a kneeling Strang in his room, a makeshift harness with reins attached to his head, beating his right thigh with a stick that passes for a riding crop, as his appalled father looks on. Ultimately, the treatment of these segments may certainly seem gratuitous, but Lumet did not aim at merely shocking his viewer. Rather, he tries to underscore the intensity of his protagonist's monomania...