![]() Rita, whose real name is Susan but who changed it to be more colorful - like her bleached blonde with pink highlights hair - will journey from uncultured naif to collegiate sophisticate. “Devouring pulp fiction is not being ‘well-read,'” he tells her, words I’ve parroted to too many comic book addicts to count. And then this blowsy spitfire shows up, an empty vessel who wants him to “change” her “from the inside,” expose her to the wider world, better songs and real literature. “You don’t really expect me to teach this sober?”įrank is a published poet who teaches literature, 50ish and past caring. But his classes have noticed the sleepy eyes and boozy, distracted slur of his lectures. ![]() “The Lost Weekend” hides one, because he’s witty that way. Frank Bryant has a roomy, book-stuffed office, with bottles hidden behind some volumes. He is the teacher, the mentor who relishes the “unspoiled” working girl of 26 who presents herself to him to be taught.ĭr. And why do you go? To learn how other people see the world, to meet people from cultures outside your social or work circle, to expand your mind, to learn that there are better songs to sing.Ĭaine plays “Frank,” as Rita calls him, first scene to last, with a mix of burn-out dipsomania and long-dormant idealism. College is an expensive gamble, adventure and ordeal. That’s why you show this film to your kids, in high school or as they’re college-bound, especially if they’re not to the manner born. “There must be better songs to sing than this,” her despairing mother answered. Everyone was swilling beer, young and old, singing along to some inane Brit-pop on the jukebox. Rita ( Julie Walters, in a career-defining performance) was down’ta pub with her family. Frank Bryant (Caine) as well, the reasons this hairdresser and “Open University” student he was tutoring wanted to go to college. Whatever the critics at the time thought - and Roger Ebert rather missed the boat on this one - it was plain to me at the time that the upper-middle to upper class backgrounds of that generation of reviewers kept them from “getting” a movie that can be summed up with a few words from Willy Russell’s play that spoke to college professor Dr. ![]() Working at a classical music NPR station at the time “Rita” came out, my friends on the staff and I just snorted at the reference, sort of a variation of the way Woody Allen used Mahler as shorthand for “See how smart I am?” himself and how cultured any of his characters who dropped the name were meant to be viewed.Īnd I recall how this movie changed my life. ![]() A pretentious but fragile young aesthete bubbles it to our title character more than once. That line, “Wouldn’t you just die without Mahler?” from “Rita” is amusing, ironic and aspirational. I couldn’t help but think of it watching “Tár,” which is all about Mahler, at least as a subtext. I think of it whenever someone mentions another grand Michael Caine performance, as friends prep children for the Big Adventure of university, and urge them to watch it with their kids before they depart. I think about “Educating Rita” several times a year, pretty much every year since this 1983 jewel came out. It’s a deeply personal thing, built on background and core beliefs that direct how a given person responds to a given moviegoing experience. Taste is the most subjective thing in film criticism.
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