This film definitely isn't an example of great directing, cinematography or editing. The music is kind of cheap sounding and the overall feel isn't far off television. What makes this film great are the script, Julie Walters and Michael Caine. It's proof that if you get the right actors and the right words for them to speak all you have to do and stand back and let them get on with it.
What also makes this film a great film is that it portrays very convincingly a character transformation. For me there is something particularly fascinating about showing a character in a film going through enormous personal change. However in Educating Rita the transformation has a bitter sting and it's only at the end that we find out exactly what the transformation of Rita the hairdresser to Susan the educated confident young woman really means. Rita had told her tutor played by Michael Caine that she wants to "sing a better tune" and that's why she wants to be educated. However at the end she is forced to question the value of all that she has learned when Michael Caine tells her that she hasn't learned a better tune, only a different one and on her lips it sounds "shrill and tuneless".
I think the real message of this film is that ultimately education isn't just about books and knowledge it's about self discovery. At the end of the film, Susan, through education has become an independent woman with real choices in her life. However her real achievement is that she has found out who she is and is comfortable with that. She isn't embarrassed by her past and she isn't mesmerised and infatuated by the middle class world of academia. A great ending to a fantastic film.
What also makes this film a great film is that it portrays very convincingly a character transformation. For me there is something particularly fascinating about showing a character in a film going through enormous personal change. However in Educating Rita the transformation has a bitter sting and it's only at the end that we find out exactly what the transformation of Rita the hairdresser to Susan the educated confident young woman really means. Rita had told her tutor played by Michael Caine that she wants to "sing a better tune" and that's why she wants to be educated. However at the end she is forced to question the value of all that she has learned when Michael Caine tells her that she hasn't learned a better tune, only a different one and on her lips it sounds "shrill and tuneless".
I think the real message of this film is that ultimately education isn't just about books and knowledge it's about self discovery. At the end of the film, Susan, through education has become an independent woman with real choices in her life. However her real achievement is that she has found out who she is and is comfortable with that. She isn't embarrassed by her past and she isn't mesmerised and infatuated by the middle class world of academia. A great ending to a fantastic film.