Product: Educating Rita (UK) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ]
Rating: 5.0
Don't get above your raising
In Educating Rita, we find a woman, working as a hairdresser, who wants to better herself (played by Julie Walters). More than anything she wants to learn, not to put herself above family and friends, but from a desire to know, to see what else there is in the world that she can do and be.Unfortunately, everyone in her life finds the evolving Rita not to their liking, especially her husband.Working and studying and coping with a husband who demands children are not easy for Rita. Things get particularly tense when the husband finds that she has been taking birth control pills behind his back. He burns her books (gifts from her tutor, Frank, played by Michael Caine) and her essay and forces her to decide if it's worth the effort after all. Not wanting to be trapped in a life in which she has never felt that she belongs, she pursues her studies, becoming more alienated in the process. Only Frank encourages her, in spite of his nearly constant alcoholic haze, and she finds her place among other students and while reading great literature, sometimes with her own quirky interpretations.Even there, however, she doesn't quite fit in. Perhaps it's only in her own mind that she is not one with the academic world and those who reside there, but in the end she is happier and still yearning to learn.This really is a marvelous story and one movie that any adult returning to school to pursue a degree should see. There are pitfalls and people who will try to discourage someone eager to gain that education. This movie is highly recommended.