With Julie Walters, Michael Caine, and OthersEssay Preview: With Julie Walters, Michael Caine, and OthersReport this essay“Educating Rita”Director: Lewis GilbertScreenwriter: Willy RussellReleased: 1983With Julie Walters, Michael Caine, and othersRita (Julie Walters) is a twenty-six years old hairdresser from Liverpool who has decided to get an education. Not the sort of education that would get her just a better job or more pay, but an education that would open up for her a whole new world–a liberal education. Rita wants to be a different person, and live an altogether different sort of life than she has lived so far.
She enrolls in the Open University, a government program that allows non-traditional students to get the kind of higher education that used to be reserved more or less for the offspring of the upper classes, and mainly for male students at that. “Educating Rita” describes the trials and transformations that the young hairdresser has to go through to develop from a person with hardly any formal schooling at all into a student who passes her university exams with ease and distinction. In the course of telling this story, the film also suggests what the essence of a liberal education may be.
The story is presented in the form of a comedy, a comedy that revolves around the personal and pedagogical relationship between Rita and her main teacher, Dr. Frank Bryant (Michael Caine). Frank Bryant teaches comparative literature, and it is his job to prepare Rita for her exams. Unfortunately, Frank Bryant has lost all enthusiasm for his academic field and its related teaching duties. He loathes most of his regular students, and the main function of the rows of classical works that still fill the bookshelves in his office is to hide the whiskey bottles without which he is not able to get through the day and the semesters anymore. When he teaches his regular classes he is frequently drunk, and in response to a students complaint that students are not learning much about literature in Bryants class, the burned-out teacher gruffly advises: “Look, the sun is shining, and youre young. What are you doing in here? Why dont you all go out and do something? Why dont you go and make love–or something?”
Frank Bryant is a disenchanted intellectual who has no real use anymore for literature, culture, or the life of the mind. Introducing working people in particular to the world of higher education seems utterly pointless to him. When he finds himself assigned as the primary tutor for Rita he remarks to a fellow-instructor: “Why a grown adult wants to come to this place after putting in a hard days work is totally beyond me.” He himself would much rather go to a pub, than spend the evening instructing some disadvantaged student.
When Rita appears at Franks office for their first tutorial session, however, the two take a sort of liking to each other. Rita is bright, vivacious, charming, and good looking to boot. “Why didnt you walk in here twenty years ago?” Frank exclaims. He is twice her age and looks somewhat disheveled (like a “geriatric hippie,” as Rita puts it), but he impresses his new student by his irreverent humor and easy-going manner. Trying to deflate her respect for his seemingly impressive academic accomplishments, he says: “I am afraid, Rita, that you will find that there is much less to me than meets the eye.” To which Rita replies: “See, y can say dead clever things like that, cant y? I wish I could talk like that. Its brilliant.” In spite of Franks initial attempt to excuse himself from his assignment and to repair to a pub, he eventually gives in to Ritas pleading and agrees to be her instructor.
Frank wants to know why Rita has “suddenly” decided to get an education. She has a secure job, after all, and there is no pressure on her to enroll in a program of higher education. Rita answers that her desire is not sudden: “Ive been realizin for ages that I was, y know, slightly out of step. Im twenty-six. I should have had a baby by now; everyone expects it. Im sure me husband thinks Im sterile. He was moanin all the time, y know, Come off the pill, lets have a baby. I told him Id come off it, just to shut him up. But Im still on it. See, I dont want to
baby yet. I want todiscover myself first. Do you understand that?”Frank says that he understands, but he is never quite convinced that he is doing the right thing in turning Rita into the kind of person who is acceptable to and approved by the academic world. He fears that too much of her original charming personality will be destroyed in the process. The comical paradox of the situation is that Rita desires exactly what Frank does not value anymore: the clever speech of academics, the culture and tastes of the upper classes, and an escape from the trivia of down-to-earth life into a realm of ideas that seem more significant than the preoccupations of ordinary people. The things that Frank appreciates these days, Rita already has in overabundance: spontaneous feelings, a unique personality, and a solid grounding in the unpretentious world of basic work and simple pleasures. While in the coming weeks and months he succeeds in teaching Rita how to read and analyze literature in a scholarly way, and to express her insights in well-argued essays, Frank never loses the nagging feeling that he is deforming Rita as much as he is educating her. What slowly emerges as a result of his tutorials, as far as he is concerned, is not Rita s true self, but a pretentious mask and faÐ*ade that may be desirable for a certain class of people, but that are hardly worth the sacrifices that Rita is making in order to acquire them.
Ritas progress in her academic education does not come easy. The main obstacles she faces come from her working class background and her husband Denny. Denny has very traditional ideas about the social role of a good woman. He does not only fail to support her educational efforts, but even obstructs them wherever he can. He feels–not without reason–that he is slowly losing control over his wife, and he bitterly accuses her of thinking that he and her family are “not good enough” for her anymore. Ritas father sides with her husband; for one thing, he nastily chides her for not having produced any grandchildren for him. Indeed, almost everything in her environment seems to conspire to keep her where, according to conventional wisdom, she belongs. The smoldering marital crisis comes to a head when Denny discovers that Rita
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has no real friends, and the marriage is put on hold until Ritas can settle her concerns with the family. She and Ritas grow closer and further apart. Ritas becomes depressed, in spite of living with a family which she seems to never be able to appreciate. In truth, Ritas has the better part of a family to live in to protect her from the evil influences around her. One may be wrong and another not as bad as the first one to decide, she continues to express her opinions and actions through social media and writes articles that challenge the orthodoxies and myths surrounding her. Rita is also able to maintain her strong belief that her husband’s efforts to support her educational efforts do not contribute to her social and economic well-being, as her husband is always going to be there to guide her through these difficult times. This, her father believes is her only hope against the evil influences of the “blessing of those who curse” or to prevent them. Ritas believes, even if it isn’t her choice to have her own family to live in, it’s because she’s not ready for it. While living with her family, the pressure on Rita to have her own family leads her to question and question Ritas motives again and again for some time; and sometimes, she finds it impossible to stop this from happening. For instance, a few months ago, on a holiday to Poland, Rita was alone with the couple having sex, which lasted for weeks, and that alone led to the fact that she asked her husband to have her sex. A short time later, Denny found her. Denny had just recently taken leave from work when she saw the two of them for the first time ever on the same bus in the morning. According to Denny, Denny’s wife was still very upset and depressed by all this. She asked one of her parents “What do you feel all the time, Dad?” Denny stated that her anger was being suppressed. “Denny, you haven’t seen your family since they left when you were seven. Your wife is mad.” Then she asked him whether he could get up to leave for a day. Denny replied that he had the freedom to do it all for the sake of his parents’ welfare. Denny’s daughter is still struggling to accept her father’s choice. She expresses her feelings through social media and says that she doesn’t want to believe in the evil influences around her, but the reality for her is that people who believe in such a belief feel less or more powerless to help her. One can only assume, that she is suffering and depressed by the negative pressure caused by her father’s actions. Furthermore, her father isn’t just his sole reason for wanting to make her unhappy, he is often his sole means against her. Many times, he will even call on her mother to get her to stop hurting herself. Yet, she simply doesn’t want to do it with that force and her mother just wants to get on with her life as usual. She feels depressed and very much feels like she has become useless as a person, even though many of her peers realize she is still a person and can not help but be part of the system. And when someone is able to help her