Do not think for a second that I will spend a dime going to see Titanic in 3-D. Ain’t happening. I just thought I’d take advantage of its reissue in its new form to review the film, because the only item of substance changed was a starfield.
The most memorable ship in human history is the Titanic. If you know nothing about maritime history, shipping, ships, or crossing any water wide than a puddle on the sidewalk, chances are you’ll still know the name Titanic. Arguably the finest ships of the time, she set sail from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912, bound for New York City on her maiden voyage. She and over 1,500 of her passengers and crew (out of over 2,200) never arrived.
The story is the stuff of legend. The Titanic was “unsinkable.” She was the very latest statement for luxury travel. It was her maiden voyage. The cream of English and American society were on board. The finest employees of the White Star Line were assigned to work on the Titanic. The ship’s designer, the owner of the company, were aboard for this maiden voyage.
And it all went horribly wrong.
Ever since, writers, filmmakers, etc., from around the world have been drawn to the story. I’m not sure it’s possible to not make a great film about this legendary and tragic ship. (That’s not completely true, of course. There was a made-for-TV thing, for instance, that tried real hard to be awful, and succeeded.) Rising to the challenge of so many competitors and making the film about the disaster is no small feat. James Cameron pretty much nailed it, and it will be a long time before anyone challenges his work.
Cameron chose to frame the disaster story with a modern treasure hunt, and this is the film’s biggest problem. These parts just drag. Everyone in the modern world hangs by a thread over a pool of godawful.
The film improves immeasurably when it transitions into the past, where we meet Jack (Leonardo diCaprio), a poor boy who wins passage to America. Once aboard, he will meet poor little rich girl Rose (Kate Winslet), and thus the stage is set for the romance that will guide us through the voyage of Titanic, from joyous beginnings to tragic endings, all told to the tune of stilted dialogue.
The romance mostly works. It’s fraught with cliché, the poor boy showing the rich girl the true riches of life, etc. It’s made even worse – much, much worse – by Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), ostensibly Rose’s finance, the rich, rich man who is “smothering” her. Hockley is simply too awful to be real. I’m convinced that he has doves brought to his room in the evenings...so he can snap their necks in glee. He needs wax for his mustache so he can twirl it just so, all the while uttering a Snidley Whiplash laugh of hideous villainy. It’s not dreadful acting (Zane is perfectly over the top), it’s a dreadful characterization uttering dreadful dialogue. I want to cover my ears and cry, “Please, please, make him stop.”
And then the ship hits the iceberg.
Right at that moment, right at the moment where Cameron recounts the sinking of the ship in near-real time, the entire film changes character. Certainly Hockley will continue being dreadful, but the horror of the night’s events clearly take charge. From petty bourgeoisie bickerings, we segue to a story of survival, because on the unsinkable luxury liner Titanic, there aren’t enough lifeboats to save all on board, and the ship will sink long before any help can arrive.
Everything Cameron did to make this film now pays off. He shifted production to Mexico, where he could afford to assemble a massive water tank, in which he would assemble a life-size movie set of the ship; he rebuilt roughly 7/8ths of the ship, with the final bit added in by CGI. When the actors walked the decks, they were actually walking the decks. It was a fabulous conceit, and I confess that at the time I thought Cameron’s ego was out of control.
Until I saw the end result, which is staggering. This entire set could pivot up, duplicating the ship going down by the bow. Still more: the set could snap in half, again duplicating what happened to the ship that night. Watching this in action, realizing that those are real people (well, actors) running on a life-sized set replicating the ship...well, the willing suspension of disbelief was complete and they weren’t on a set, they were on a ship. A sinking ship. And almost everyone you are looking at is doomed.
When he’s not engaged in class warfare, Cameron sticks close to historical fact. If you’ve read any of the histories of the Titanic (A Night to Remember by Walter Lord remains a favorite of mine) then you’ll recognize little touches here and there. His most egregious rewriting of history is how he portrays Molly Brown (Kathy Bates). The historical Molly Brown became rich when she took over operation of her late husband’s silver mines. In real life, unlike the film, Molly commandeered her lifeboat and made it return to pick up more survivors. From then on, Molly had the nickname “Unsinkable” and was a take-charge sort of lady; the film, in letting a crewmember bully her into acquiescence and silence, gets her completely wrong.
For me, the emotional climax of the story happens shortly after Titanic slips beneath the sea. After all the cacophony of the sinking we’re left with the desperate cries and screams of people freezing to death. Moments later, all is silent because all of those “survivors” are now dead. No pun intended, but it’s a chilling moment, the precise moment when the enormity of the disaster hit home for me.
This is the power of the Cameron’s Titanic; this is where it earns its Oscars. I’ve watched any number of previous films about the great ship, but none hit home like this one. The silliness of the class warfare, the laughably horrible dialogue, the trite rich girl/poor boy love story, the dreadful framing story of the treasure hunt...all become irrelevant, swept aside by the power of the core story, the central story that Cameron told so well, the fateful maiden voyage of RMS Titanic.
I doubt 3-D will improve it, but I’m sure it can’t diminish it.
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