"It does?"
Pause.
"It does."

This subtle speech inflection and the Yeats volume prove more than enough to confirm his hunch later.

The second scene is a dream sequence. (I won't go Freudian, but there: I've said so you have to consider it... shudder.) Preston is reliving the arrest of his wife for sense offences. She kisses him as she is dragged out. Preston and his children can do nothing but watch.

Later, when Preston has ceased taking Prozium, he watches filmed footage of her incineration, and turns his head as she walks into the booth. Does this indicate he's just committed a sense crime? It does spur him to try and halt the incineration of a woman, Mary (played by Emily Watson), arrested by him who incidentally was also Partridge's lover.

Notice that she walks into the booth after the red vinyl cape is removed from her, yet when the booth is closed, we see a close-up of a hand, clutching at red vinyl - is this Mary's hand or that of Preston's wife? Mary supposedly walks into the booth wearing a black dress. It may just be a continuity error.

It astounds me that this film isn't more popular, really. It might be because it's largely made in Europe, or because a lot of the main characters are played by non-American actors (I checked this out on IMDB and Wimmer states he chose such actors deliberately, in the DVD commentary), or is it that the soundtrack is practically non-existent unlike all that bombastic John-Williams stuff? Some soundtracks really bash it into that you should feel 'sad' at point A, or 'elation' at point B of the narration, and so on.

One might argue that in order to create this "not-another-bleak-future" pic, Wimmer flogged things from all over the place - literary, visual, and historical (on the commentary he says critics accuse him of this), but that's fine, the film wouldn't work without all that referencing, it didn't seem token, or boastful. It enhanced the narrative, I feel.

I never know what to make of Equilibrium, not fully: some days it serves to remind me of just how depressing life on medication is (and believe me, I know) and how psychological disorders are on the increase, other days it's some sort of Brechtian didactic piece on humanity. Many other days, it's just a freaking kick-arse action flick set in a possible reality one hopes never ever comes into being. Then again, if the iconoclast of such a regime is going to be anywhere near as bonkable as Christian Bale...

Sorry, couldn't resist: I'm trying to redeem myself for making you all sit here for so bloody long. Just go and watch it for yourselves.