BFI 100: 84 – Educating Rita (1983)
There is a defining shot in Lewis Gilbert’s Educating Rita – a film based on Willy Russell’s stage play – that is both visually striking and thematically moving. For reasons I won’t spoil, we find a Chekov book burning in a fire. In a film thematically rich with ideas of freedom, it is a visual allusion to an all too real lack thereof.