Educating Rita
Greetings, ‘Educating Rita’ is a 1983 comedy-drama film that was directed by Lewis Gilbert and is based off of Willy Russell’s play of the same name which debuted 3 years earlier. Gilbert is known for directing a number of films such as ‘Alfie’, ‘Sink the Bismark!’ and three James Bond movies including the outlandish ‘Moonraker.’ The playwright, Russell, is also known for writing ‘Shirley Valentine’, ‘Our Day Out’ and ‘Blood Brothers’. The picture stars Michael Caine, who had worked with Gilbert beforehand in ‘Alfie’, and Julie Walters as the two main leads with Michael Williams, Jeananne Crowley and Maureen Lipman in supporting roles. The music was composed by David Hentschel who has collaborated with numerous notable artists over previous decades including Elton John, George Harrison and Ringo Starr while also writing the score for a few films.
The plot begins with Rita, a 26 year old hairdresser, who has become bored of her monotonous life as she lives and works in a dreary working class estate. As she goes through her life listening to the usual inane gossip of her clients and having the same boozy company in the same old pubs, Rita decides that she wants more from life. She wants to feel like she has accomplished something and become a ‘someone’, escaping the constraints of her blue-collar background. A main driver behind this decision is the heavy societal pressure to start having children that is coming from her husband, Danny, and her wider family. Rita, who is actually called Susan, is afraid that having a child will chain her to a life she is becoming disillusioned with. As such, Rita decides to go back to school and seeks out higher education.
Her decision leads her to literary professor Dr Frank Bryant whom she hopes to learn from under his scholarly tutelage. Much like Rita, Bryant has become dissatisfied with his life and he has taken to drinking to cope with his lack of meaning or purpose. While Rita is frustrated with the simple-mindedness of her often inebriated peers, Bryant has grown wearisome of the pompousness and inauthenticity of the academics he surrounds himself with. When the two first meet, Frank is immediately impressed by Rita’s hunger for knowledge and her common sense answers that bring a fresh new perspective to topics he has been teaching for years. Despite admitting that he is an atrocious teacher and trying to dissuade her of an academic life, Rita still wants to learn from Frank and the two grow closer together as they both reinvigorate the other.
‘Educating Rita’ is considered one of the best British films of all time and it is not hard to see why it has earned such an envious position. Its encaptivating from beginning to end and never seems to drag at any point in my own opinion. Both Michael and Julie give very memorable, charming performances as two people struggling to find satisfaction in their own lives but providing it to the other through their companionship. Rita’s transformation into an educated woman is interesting to watch as she develops a healthy self-confidence but slowly discovers her new social group is just as flawed as her old one. I’d be eager to watch the original play someday if given the opportunity as I would like to see how faithful the film is to the source material.
Plot=8/10
Characters=9/10
Special Effects=8/10
Overall=9/10
Quote of the Day
No, it's the truth! I swear it! Danny told me! He went up into one of the bedrooms, the door was open, and he saw this crazy woman in the bathtub! She tried to strangle him!
Wendy Torrance
The Shining
