1997--Titanic, James Cameron

1997—Titanic, James Cameron

Nominated: As Good as it Gets, The Full Monty, Good Will Hunting, L.A. Confidential

Should have won: Amistad 

Be sure to see: The Fifth Element, Jackie Brown, The Relic

“Sleep soundly, young Rose. I have built you a good ship; strong and true. She's all the lifeboat you'll need.”--Thomas Andrews

     Many movies have a love it/hate it stigma. Movies where there seems to be no middle ground. Pulp Fiction comes to mind. Perhaps the best example of this is Titanic, meaning the 1997 version. As it stands, Titanic is the second of only three remakes to win best picture. The first and third are Ben-Hur, a 1959 remake of a 1925 film, and The Departed, 2006's winner which is a remake of a Chinese movie called Infernal Affairs. This Titanic might not be considered a remake by many because of the subplots, but let's face it, there have been many tellings of the sinking of the Titanic. There is a 1953 Barbara Stanwyck version (which I found better than this one) and a 1958 telling called A Night to Remember which I've never seen but have heard it was the best. 1933's winner Cavalcade hints at a Titanic cruise and there have been a number of other trips on the doomed ship to hit the silver screen. Of course this Oscar winner is by far the most popular.

     When Titanic bumped Jurassic Park from the all-time box office gross list, I never thought it would be topped. In my mind, it got the new title not because it was good enough for everyone to see but because of repeated customers consisting of flocks of teenage girls. These aren't facts, mind you, just what I figured. In 2009, Avatar (also directed by James Cameron; pretty impressive one director has the top two highest grossing movies ever made) finally took over the top spot, but debate will always linger. These figures do not take account of inflation. It is widely accepted that the true box office champ is Gone With the Wind.

     But as for the film itself, as mentioned it is a love it/hate it attitude people have. It seems hating on it is the accepted attitude and fans of the movie get bitter over it. I'll admit when I saw it when it came out, and then again about a year later, I hated it both times. I vowed never to watch it again and was outraged it won and Amistad (my choice for best picture) wasn't even nominated. Sixteen years later I sat down and watched it again for this blog and I'm not ashamed to say it sort of grew on me...slightly. I still can't believe it sold so many tickets; I still say it was nowhere near best picture of the year with Amistad, Good Will Hunting, As Good as it Gets, and L.A. Confidential released that year. I've always said not only is it not the best picture of 1997, it isn't even the best movie released that year named after a boat! It isn't the garbage that I once thought it was but I still had many problems with the movie. Those of you who know me know I don't go with public opinion; I march to the beat of my own drum. And if I say I didn't like it, it is because I didn't like it not because it is not cool to admit I do. It has its moments. It is an okay movie. But I still didn't love it that much.

     The movie opens with the exploration of the wreckage of the doomed vessel via underwater camera, looking for a long lost priceless diamond worn by Louis XVI that went missing in 1792. Through insurance claims it is proven to have been aboard the ship. This expedition is headed by Brock Lovett, a man played by Bill Paxton, a bad actor who tends to pop up in some great movies like The Terminator, Weird Science, Aliens, Nightcrawler and True Lies. In the safe, they find no necklace but a drawing of a woman wearing it. It turns out this woman is Rose Bukater, a woman who is still alive at 101 years old. Rose is played by Gloria Stewart who was nominated for best supporting actress for this roll though all she does is sit in a chair. I wonder how many fantastic performances were snubbed that year for hers. By the way, if you want to see a better movie with Gloria Stewart in it see 1933's The Invisible Man. Anyway, she recognizes the drawing on television and seeks out the team to tell them her story. It is a story of how she and her wealthy family took the voyage across the Atlantic in the unsinkable ship, how she met a man from the lower class on board, and how they fell in love.

     The movie is sort of a true story since there really was a Titanic that was said to be unsinkable but met a fateful demise the morning of April 15, 1912. There is also a few characters in the movie based on real people like The Unsinkable Molly Brown (though her real name was actually Maggie), the captain, a couple of the guests and my favorite character, Thomas Andrews, who is the ship's architect. But the main characters are completely fictitious, which is fine. I can suspend my belief for the movie.

     The poor young man Rose meets is Jack Dawson who saves her from jumping off of the ship one night (though I don't think she would have) and they end up falling in love with each other. I know I could add a lot more to this plot but what is the point? It isn't much you haven’t seen before: Girl is engaged to guy. Guy mistreats girl. Girl meets other guy. Girl and new guy fall in love. One of my problems with this movie is if the roles were reversed and Jack is engaged and runs off to a girl he meets on the boat, he would be a cheating bastard. We all know this country has a “man bad; woman good” attitude. Don't believe me? Watch Maury sometime. The fact is, Rose is a cheater, straight up. But I don't blame the movie for going this route. I guess her fiance, Cal, is a bad guy; he did hit her once in the movie which isn't cool. But other than that, his only guilt is that he is rich and snobby. I don't think he was villainous enough to be that bad a guy, even when he uses a child to help save his own life. By the way, Jack is supposed to be poor. So poor that he later tells Rose's company he sleeps under bridges. But he also tells Rose all he has is ten dollars in his pocket. Ten dollars was a nice chunk of change in 1912 right? I went to google and found a rate calculator. According to that site, Jack had about $243. 

     The major problem I have with this movie is I didn't care about the romance that much. I wish they had made a movie about all of the passengers. Let me learn about the rich people, the poor people, and the crew. The best scenes in the movie (other than the crash) is after Jack and Rose chitchat about his drawings and the women gossip about Molly Brown, the captain speaks to Andrews about whether or not to speed up the ship so soon. I want to know about the background of the ship. I want to know about these people. The captain--what is his record like? What other boats has he guided across the ocean? All of the passengers, not just Jack and Rose. But I know it is told in flashback form so it must be through Rose's eyes. I get it. And I get who the intended audience is. I can accept that audience is not me and certainly don't blame James Cameron for making it that way. Money talks and obviously this movie made money shout. It also has a “Rich people are evil; poor people are divine” feel. One scene shows Rose's mother has servants on the boat. She looked like a maid. I suppose she could have been a crew member being hospitable to the guests but she was aiding in the fitting of a dress as though they were in a mansion at home. Did crew members of a ship do that? Maybe they did, I don't know.

     Rose tells Jack she can no longer see him and then goes back to him five minutes later, I would guess roughly three hours of real time passed. They are on a boat out in the open not in seclusion and they kiss. As mentioned, I find it funny how women think this is such a romantic movie but if the roles were reversed and Jack was the engaged audiences would hate him. But they end up in the iconic scene of the first half where Jack draws Rose's picture wearing only the locket. Four points I'd like to make are 1. Yes, Kate Winslet looked pretty good. Just being honest here. 2. I bet Rose's arm would fall asleep pretty fast in the pose she was in. 3. It should be noted that the closeups of Jack's hand drawing were of the hand of director James Cameron drawing and 4. The scene is capped by a big laugh. Of course they end up having sex, not in the drawing room but in a steamy car. You know it is hot in that car but in typical movie sex fashion, she covers her breasts to keep a PG-13 rating. I wonder how many realistic sex scenes there are in movies, including the post sex rest period.

     The ship doesn’t hit the iceberg until 1:38 in and I wish it had forty minutes before. Something I wondered about that scene is, after the ship hits, someone records the time. Since they are in the middle of the ocean, what time zone are they using?

     For me (and many people, men mostly I would presume) the whole movie builds up to the sinking of the ship. The entire sequence is very impressively done. It is the one part of this movie I though was better than the Stanwyk one. It was terrifyingly realistic, even with the little bloopers here and there like the rubber parts of the set that were supposed to be metal. It didn't matter. It sinks a bit, it breaks, and it sinks the rest of the way. It is a long, drawn out scene paying close attention to all of the peril. It is a very good sequence.

     According to the movie, 700 people found boats and around 1500 drown. One of whom is Jack and many have ripped Rose for not sharing the door she was using as a raft. On a MythBusters episode I believe they said it would tip with someone else on it anyway. In the midst of the madness of the sinking ship, there is a sweet image of an old couple cuddling in bed, facing their demise together, and one of a mother reading her doomed children a bedtime (dead time?) story. I heard there is a blooper just after that scene of the children running on the deck but I didn’t spot it. Maybe you can.  

     At the end Rose says there is no record for a Jack Dawson but why not? Sure not as a passenger on the boat since he won his ticket gambling but not even record of him as a citizen? He has no papers? And why didn't Lovett ever ask Rose where the necklace was? I realize it was Rose who sought him out, it was her purpose, but he had to have taken that opportunity to ask where it is. She mentions it in her tale, he never asked where it is. Now in the flashback, Cal says Rose has it in her coat but maybe old Rose didn't share that with Lovett's crew. I've always said there is so much license one can have when telling a first person story. Rose isn’t going to know what Cal says if she isn’t around but I'm sure she could assume he would have remembered it was in her coat. But Lovett would surely have asked about it since that was the goal of his expedition, right?

     All in all, the epic love story that is James Cameron's Titanic was nowhere near as bad as I remember it being when I was 20. But it could have been so much better. I had a lot of problems with it but there were a lot of positives, too...And I don't plan on revisiting it for another fifteen years.