Titanic Review

        Titanic is one of the highest grossing movies of all time. No one at the time could’ve imagined that a romantic movie would gross a billion dollars in the late 90s. To put into perspective, this was before any superhero or an existing IP would dominate the box office in the 2000s or 2010s. In one way, it would’ve been too easy to make a movie on just the sinking of the ship. Adding a romantic side gave what could seemingly be a plain disaster movie the extra oomph that audiences weren’t expecting. 

1. Jack and Rose

        I get this feeling that the movie works simply for the fact that it fuses two different genres into one picture. Of course, the love angle steals the show. As well as the actual sinking of the ship, which I will get to don’t you worry. So, about the romance part. To me, it works in the film’s favor since it must be more than the actual event in question. 

        So, we mostly follow through Rose’s recollections about her being on the ship. Technically, we start with the sea explorers’ journey to get the famous necklace that is believed to be in the wreckage. Rose’s gets wind of the news and decides to tell the explorers the connection between her and the ship. This is one of the rarest films to be shown in a non-chronological order. 

        Right from the start, we see that Rose isn’t in a good place even though she’s living in high society. It’s ironic since she doesn’t believe in it and has a fiancée that is way to controlling and is just a plain dick. When she finally meets Jack, it’s the main highlight in the whole film. You believe the chemistry since he really allows her to break out of that snobbish role. Right down to inviting her to the lower decks party. Even teaching her how to hock a loogie. 

        The best scene that involves Jack is when he’s invited to the dinner along with Rose’s family. He feels out of his league, but Kathy Bates’ Molly helps him gain his confidence and really express himself with how he lives his life. He juxtaposes his rough and tumble ways with the affluent by just being someone who’s just trying to live. And it was a neat twist that it was him that sketched that portrait of Rose.

        As Old Rose is telling the story, it works in the film’s benefit since we get to contrast between the explorers and to the people who were in the ship. From how I see it, the crew of the Russian exploration ship are way too greedy about getting the prized necklace for profit. Even though the main captain states that he’s trying to preserve and save the artifacts. Not to say that they’re the baddies, Rose’s narration to her story really has them captivated.

        Like you couldn’t have gotten better actors than Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet to portray these two characters. As I mentioned before, their chemistry in the film works since it has that level of depth to them. It’s needed in this dynamic film where the runtime isn’t a factor. It’s three hours sure, but their relationship holds us over. Especially when the actual event happens, you want them to survive. In a way, their relationship is romantic and tragic. 

2. Titanic

        This wasn’t the first time that the ship was the focus for a film. At the time when the film came out, it was only the 11th film to be about the disaster. Some of them had the drama angle to them, while the others were a documentary and a propaganda film. It’s interesting to note that James Cameron is the director of the film. He was already an established director with his films The Terminator, Aliens, and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. His slate was mostly related to action films but credited with the smart action in his movies and overall ingenuity. I think it was during that moment where he wanted to do something different and stray away from what he was known for. Nothing wrong with that, and I can see his fascination with underwater when looking at clips from his underrated film The Abyss. 

        I give him credit since he went all the way to create the Titanic with a mixture of realism and special effects. You really feel like you’re in the time period when the ship takes off and being surrounded by the affluent of the vessel. The set design looks gorgeous and authentic to the time. This is when you have a director really care about the work to make sure that no shortcuts were taken when describing this story. Especially seeing the inner mechanism at work that powers up the ship’s engine.

        With all that squared away, let’s talk about the sinking of the ship. Let’s be honest, if the relationship aspect didn’t sell you or you just weren’t enthralled by it. Perhaps the ship sinking got you going. It’s like finally, after 2 hours the action starts to take shape. But before I talk about that, I want to connect the ship sinking with the Russian exploration ship. I feel that when Rose is telling the story, people want to know about the necklace, but hear how she survived. 

Then when she goes more in depth, people are just fascinated with her when she explains her relationship to Jack just before the ship collides with the iceberg. I can interpret the ship’s crew with the audience since they’re sold in with the romance that they represent us as to see just how the romantic duo will survive. 

        I just absolutely love how carefully crafted the sinking is handled in the film. It only took approximately two hours for the Titanic to sink and rip apart. Cameron perfectly showed that when we see the water gradually rise in the bowels of the ship. This is also where we get to see the film transition from a romantic one to a disaster film. It would’ve been exploitive to just focus on the disaster without any form of humanity. 

        And by humanity, we see in this event how far people go to survive. It doesn’t shy away just how desperate people can be. Through the violence and the desperation shows just the true nature of the disaster. I really like the special effects of the ship breaking apart and the people trying to get the higher ground. It’s shocking to see just how many people jumped into the freezing waters and get shot due to the flawed way the crew handled the evacuation.

        The whole disaster angle is just the background in terms of the romance aspect of the film. While the film takes place on the infamous vessel, people might be confused as to why not show the reason as to why the ship met its fate. It’s not about that but show just how far the couple survives aboard in the midst of danger. The whole romance can be applicable in any disastrous event but fits in the Titanic when one of them survives to tell the story.  

3. Legacy

        It’s shocking that this movie was for a while the highest grossing movie of all time. I can only assume that the events of the film really resonated with the general audience that they each got something out of the movie. As I mentioned earlier, the film appealed to a variety of people. And I feel that it was the last of the epic films. Meaning that the film has a massive cast, which it does, only to serve as the life that the Titanic had. 

        To this day, the film has a dedicated following whenever James Cameron releases the film to coincide with its anniversary. Especially putting in the correct star map as it was during the fateful night. More so that he made a documentary about him diving down to see the actual wreckage with his crew under the sea. 

        And it’s an accomplishment where Cameron has multiple films break the billion-dollar mark with this one and his Avatar films. It’s clear that he has a knack of creating exciting worlds and to really transport people into said worlds with interesting characters. He understands how to make a movie that appeals to anyone, without it feeling too niche or too genre specific. One last thing is that for some reason, Italy holds the dubious honor of releasing three animated Titanic movies. They’re bad, just bad. 

4. Overall

        Titanic is classic film by every stretch. The time doesn’t feel long in the least bit when you’re following the couple and seeing the actual event.