TITANIC - A Reflection

DiCaprio and Winslet recreate their favorite scene from Love Actually.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Titanic was the most important movie that I didn't see in 1997. This wasn't unusual, because I was a child. I was 10 when it started hitting icebergs in theaters that December, old enough to know about the famous ship, but not yet old enough (in my mother's opinion, at least) to see it replicated on screen. But it was a craze that none could escape. I remember other kids bragging about getting to see it and the scandal this caused in my conservative elementary school. I remember my aunt telling me it was okay that her daughters (both younger than me) saw it, but that boys shouldn't be allowed because you saw a naked lady. I remember it still being in theaters in the spring, and talked about regularly on the news. I remember Billy Crystal hosting the Oscars and singing a Gilligan's Island parody ("The Propeller Guy... and the Ice!" is permanently lodged in my brain), and James Cameron winning Best Director and yelling he was the king of the world after requesting a moment of silence. And I remember a girl crying the next day in gym class because Kate Winslet lost Best Actress. This was wild to me, the weird kid who loved movies, for a number of reasons:

1. Because someone else my age knew an actor's name.
2. Because someone else my age was aware of the Oscars.
3. Because these two things meant more to them in this moment than they did to me. (If I had been slightly older, this would have led to infatuation.)

I did eventually see the movie, about two years later when it premiered on whatever cable movie channel we subscribed to at the time. (I want to say The Movie Channel. Maybe Cinemax.) Memory insists I got sleepy and went to bed after about an hour, but woke up and came back to the living room right after the iceberg hit, but accidentally missing the naughtier bits like that feels too convenient for my parents. I wonder if it was suggested I leave the room, the implication being I was tired... Either way, I liked the second half where the boat sank. That part was compelling for adults and children.

Was there an event somewhere down the line where CBS or whoever showed the movie uncut? I feel like that happened while I was in high school. Around 2003 or 2004, maybe? Like after Saving Private Ryan broke records during a Veterans Day broadcast? I knew I should have hung onto those old TV Guides... Regardless! I saw the movie a second time in high school. Teen cinephile mode was fully engaged, however, so a populist work like Titanic did nothing for me. I was into real movies, like The Royal Tenenbaums and Pulp Fiction and A Mighty Wind. I believed A Night to Remember was the only Titanic movie we needed (because it was in the Criterion Collection) and it was only a matter of time before the world caught up. I maintained that the ship sinking was the best part. And that Leonardo DiCaprio (the kid from the last season of Growing Pains... in a MOVIE??) was ridiculous.

Fast forward to 2015, when Laura and I were reaching the end of the AFI 100 Years 100 Movies list, which we were watching chronologically. It was fourth from the end and we were anxious for the project to be complete. I don't think we gave it a fair shake. But I was warming to the film. The class stuff was starting to settle nicely, and unlike some other films in that section of the list, the only seams that were starting to show were the aging visual effects, something I am quick to forgive. These were the best they could do at the time, and you can feel the enormity of the vessel and the tragedy, so they're doing their job.

Which brings us to last weekend, when Titanic was rereleased in theaters for its 25th anniversary. The Avatar movies made me roll my eyes more than anything, so I was ready to either toss this in the same pile or embrace the magnitude and majesty of an epic I've never seen properly (but also in 3-D, because it's James Cameron). The good news is the 3-D adds nothing, so it isn't much of a distraction. It wasn't shot for that added dimension; it's an old-fashioned picture that lives in wide, sweeping shots and is intent on showing off its immaculate set decorations. The bad news is those darn glasses dim the light, and your local cineplex probably isn't going out of its way to brighten the projectors, so expect the picture to be murkier than it should be. The best news is that this was the only disappointing element of the experience.

Sure, it took four watches over a quarter of a century, but I get Titanic now. What Avatar taught me was that Cameron is a giant dork. He's so earnest and believes so deeply in the core materials of storytelling that to rely on their most traditional tenets is to honor them. A filmmaker who speaks in universal truths, Cameron boils things down to their simplest form and then dumps the GDP of a small country on them to create something accessible and spectacular. I don't mean any of this as a slight. It's brave to be so pure with your story. Titanic is essentially the most expensive adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, as filmed on the set of The Poseidon Adventure.

Beyond its archetypal construct, there is some lovely character work. Jack exudes a long lost American idealism; he's a free spirit who lives for adventure, unbound by capitalism. (The expat life is a good one that all should be required to experience.) DiCaprio is perfectly cast for this, sensitive and tenacious and Cameron-level passionate. You believe there's nothing he can't do. Kate Winslet's Rose is intellectually miles ahead of the socialites she is trapped with, seeing the value in then unknown painters Picasso and Monet (revealed in a truly unhinged bit of scripting), pushing back against the stuffy, bloviating men around her, and being the only passenger who notices there aren't enough lifeboats for everybody. Unfortunately, her role in upper crust chess is pawn, and her fate is to be married off to top shelf shitbird Cal Hockley (Zoolander's friend Billy Zane). She sees no way out of her predicament but death, but Jack intervenes before she can leap off the back of the boat and then changes her life over the course of, I don't know, 24 hours or something?

It's the chemistry of these two together that sells the film. Either character on their own is sort of insufferable, but they balance each other out. Sort of. There's really only time for Jack to save Rose from her hopeless future by imparting his quaint but fulfilling ways to her before sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic. This is Rose's story after all. Jack doesn't really change, but he inspires her to go her own way. I'm not sure how many people clock this anymore, but it's revealed pretty late in the movie that she still has the Heart of the Ocean, a necklace Hockley gave her that boasts an absurdly huge diamond that once belonged to Louis XVI. Rose has already decided to leave Hockley, originally to be with Jack, but after his death to sort of live on in his stead, when she realizes the necklace is in her pocket. One might think she'd hock it as a way to make a new life for herself, but she apparently did that all on her own, a double whammy embrace and rebuttal of Hockney's mantra of "A real man makes his own luck." (Because he meant was throwing around money you never had to earn. Is good irony that.) This would all ring a little hollow if it weren't so grandly, unashamedly presented. It's borderline campy, but Cameron is gesturing so strongly to the heart on his sleeve that we buy every last bit of it. Recent camp epics House of Gucci and Babylon could learn a thing or two from Titanic. Stirring a little heart in with your cynicism goes a long way, gang.

Speaking of cynical, the framing device - a salvage crew is apparently doing all this research purely in the hope that they'll stumble upon The Heart of the Ocean and get rich - doesn't work for me. When not shooting hacky documentary footage, Bill Paxton (RIP) and his team of bozos are cracking jokes and salivating over one potential piece of treasure... when the rest of the Titanic is right there? Were they granted a permit that only allows them to loot one safe? I must be missing something. But again, this storyline is designed to house the actual story, and tie it to the present where we all learn a lesson about the power of love and are reminded that 1,500 very real people died in the sinking of the Titanic. I'm not sure if Cameron is preaching to us, himself or both, but Paxton's epiphany about how devastating this disaster actually was feels like something we should have all been tuned into all along. Maybe society had trivialized Titanic by this point, and I was just unaware, suffocating in my preteen fear of everything.

The redeeming factor of the bookends is the noise elder Rose, played by the wonderful Gloria Stuart, makes when she tosses that big diamond off the back of the salvage vessel. You can hear it here at the 53 second mark. Tossing the necklace is some clueless rich people nonsense. But the noise is exquisite. (There's an alternate ending that shows just how close this movie was to being its own disaster, but wisely keeps the same sound.)

I don't think James Cameron's production will ever be the primary Titanic touchstone in my mind. It's a crowded field, after all. Titanic: Adventure Out of Time was a formative video game experience. The Eyewitness book was of similar importance. Later there were Doctor Who episodes and CollegeHumor sketches, and just last year there was the very fun (if not far too convincing) conspiracy podcast Did Titanic Sink?. Heck, the Mythbusters episode and surrounding discourse on whether Jack could have fit on that door with Rose, as played out as that argument is (but don't tell Cameron that), was more impactful at the time. But I respect what Cameron is doing. The film is a classic. Told by a true believer who manages to memorialize a tragedy while delivering a timeless love story. I like it more with each viewing. At this rate it will be in my top ten by its 50th anniversary.