Best Picture: #70
Original Release Date: December 19, 1997
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 3 hours, 14 minutes
Director: James Cameron
Quick Impressions:
When Titanic first came out, all of my younger sister’s friends thought of nothing else. It was the talk of the middle school. Everyone she knew ceaselessly vied to prove their love for the film by seeing it the most times in the theater. One girl saw it thirteen times.
To me, that seemed like twelve times too many to see Titanic in the theater. To be honest, though, we could have gone more than once ourselves. I can’t remember. I know I saw the movie with my mom, dad, and sister. I’m nearly positive we saw it well before the Oscars, and I want to say it was Christmas time. But my memory of that period of is patchy. It was the darkest few months of my entire life. (The big talking point of my nineteenth birthday that April was, “Wow! You’re still alive!” My dad made a whole big speech about it when I blew out the candles. No one was more shocked than I was that I had lived to turn nineteen. Up to that point, I had succeeded in most things I tried, but thankfully, not everything.) So despite all its widespread buzz, Titanic was not really the event of the season for my family.
In high school, I was a fan of both Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. (I still am. They’re quite talented.) When I saw Kate Winslet on screen for the first time in Sense and Sensibility, I strongly overreacted. I was sure she would win an Oscar (not for that role necessarily, just eventually, inevitably). The friends I was with liked her performance, too (though they were less sure she would win an Oscar. It wasn’t that they thought she wouldn’t, just that I had the eerie confidence of Joan of Arc declaring she would go to France, lead the army, and see the Dauphin crowned.) When Winslet actually was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, I was so relieved that the Academy shared my opinion of her merit. (“See?” I kept saying to everyone. “I knew it was obvious!”) (Note, no one was arguing with me. No one cared.)
Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio had made a favorable impression on me as Romeo (although I liked Pete Postlethwaite’s performance in that movie best). I continued passively liking DiCaprio for quite a while, but it wasn’t until The Departed that he really got my attention. I still love that performance, and he’s been one of my favorite actors ever since. (Over the years, when people would complain he was trying too hard to win an Oscar, I won’t pretend I didn’t know what they meant, but A) It’s fun to watch him try to win an Oscar, and B) It makes me so mad when actors are accused of trying to win an Oscar. That is the most annoying criticism. If you want an Oscar, how likely are you to win one without trying? (That only happens to people who aren’t established stars.)
The point is, as a teenager, I liked both Winslet and DiCaprio. So you would think the love story in this movie would have transported me to new heights of bliss, but…it didn’t. I don’t remember watching the movie the first time. But I do remember talking about it with my mother when we watched the Oscars. She and I agreed that the romance seemed contrived and weirdly generic. (She also complained that Billy Zane’s performance was over-the-top, almost hammy, and I agreed with her there, too.) What we really liked, though, was watching the ship sink.
That’s the way Titanic is so often described, as two films in one, a romance hidden in an action movie (or vice versa). Well it was the action movie part that worked for us. In my mother’s case, this was certainly no surprise. She loved disaster movies. No matter what was coming—a dinosaur, an avalanche, a fire, a shipwreck, a shark, an alien, a volcanic eruption—she always rooted for the disaster! (In her favorite disaster movies, the ones she’d watch over and over, she grew to like the human characters, too. But still, she was in it for the disaster.) So how could someone with that mindset not love to watch the Titanic sink? She also loved James Cameron’s action movies, the Terminator films, The Abyss, and (especially) Aliens (which we must have watched three zillion times in my childhood). Of course, the second half of Titanic was her cup of tea.
To me, it was the human tragedy that was so compelling, so moving. Jack and Rose are fictional characters, created to have a convenient romance. But think of all those real people trapped without lifeboats. Titanic does a good job of highlighting the class disparity on the ship and pointing out that those trapped below had no choice but to drown. I still tear up thinking about it. When my daughter made some comment about the orchestra playing, and I started to tell her, “No, that’s true, that happened,” I couldn’t even explain without bursting into tears. I had to start over so many times that I finally gave up. So many real people died when the Titanic sank. As a teenager, I cared far more about them than about Jack and Rose, who seemed thinly drawn and less than compelling to me.
But maybe I’ve grown less cynical with age. This time, watching Titanic with my daughter, I found more to enjoy in Jack and Rose’s love story. Maybe it’s that we had just watched The English Patient in which no romance can ever work out for anyone. Maybe it’s that at this point in my life, I have fallen in love myself, so I’m more sympathetic to that mindset. You know, probably, it’s that when I watched Titanic the first time, I did not have much empathy to spare for fictional characters because I was busy making a shipwreck of my own life. I was in a pretty bleak, disordered mindset, so maybe to me, being pursued by Leonardo DiCaprio did not seem like reason enough not to jump off the ship. This time, I came away with a higher opinion of the film.
The Good:
It’s possible that I got more excited about the love story this time than I anticipated because my daughter, for once, did not find it repulsive. We’ve discovered over the course of this Best Picture project of ours that she’s usually put off by most male romantic leads, and she considers nearly every possible movie romance forced. But not this one.
“He reminds me of Peter Pan,” she said thoughtfully. “He’s leading her away, off to Neverland, so she never has to grow up. Also, he looks like a child.”
I thought she made a good point. “So you don’t hate Jack?” I asked eagerly.
“No,” she said. “I love characters like this who refuse to be intimidated and never stop challenging a corrupt society.”
She does. Right now her two biggest extracurricular activities are playing the bassoon and challenging a corrupt society. (Well, perhaps what she does would fall more under the heading of railing against perceived injustice. But if someone invited her to a fancy dinner party on the Titanic, you can rest assured that she would show up in a borrowed tuxedo, ready to make trouble.)
I still think Jack’s story is a little thin, but DiCaprio’s charisma makes this less of a problem than you’d expect. It’s kind of easy now for me to understand why all of my sister’s friends wanted to see this movie thirteen times in the theater. (“Hello, I’m young Leonardo DiCaprio. I’m in love with you, so let’s rebel against your controlling mother and run off doing whatever we want!”) Plus when you’re young, falling in love often feels as intense as trying to survive the Titanic. For teen romantics, the emotions this love story evokes are probably quite relatable (or, at least, desired). Watching as an adult, listening to my daughter say, “I wish I could fall in love,” I suddenly find the Jack/Rose romance cheeringly wholesome. What young person doesn’t want to meet their true love, rebel against authority, and live life to the fullest for one magical night?
The character I like, though, is Rose. I’ve always liked Rose because I like Kate Winslet. (I don’t find it surprising that the Academy nominated her and not DiCaprio. Setting aside any reasons not grounded in the performances themselves, I think it’s because she’s playing the more substantial character. That hardly seems fair since almost every remarkable quality Jack has, DiCaprio brings to him himself. The character is so thinly drawn. But I still think that’s the issue.) I’ve always liked the passion, intensity, and crisp accent Winslet brings to Rose, but this time I focused not on her performance but on how the character is used.
Rose dramatizes the intensity and irrationality of love for us. The Titanic is sinking. The lower-class passengers are desperately trying to get above deck to avoid drowning. The upper-class passengers aren’t rushing to the lifeboats because they don’t understand the gravity of the situation and prefer to be comfortable. Rose does understand the gravity of the situation. She knows the boat is sinking. She knows there aren’t enough lifeboats. She’s pointedly told she must hurry to a lifeboat as soon as possible. But Rose runs down. She knows the water is rising on the lower part of the ship. But she has to save Jack.
Then later she does my new favorite thing in the entire movie. She jumps out of the lifeboat, onto the Titanic. Who would do such a thing? (Rose.) This single act gives us the epitome of her character.
At first I found it darkly humorous. Again and again, Jack saves her life. It can’t be easy. Not only does she threaten to jump off the boat at the beginning, but she actually does jump back onto the sinking Titanic near the end. Then I thought, no, that’s character growth. In the beginning, she’s frustrated with her life but doesn’t intend to carry through her threat of suicide. After falling in love with Jack, though, she has something to live for, something she’s also willing to die for.
So many movies give us characters professing love in flowery language. (I know because my daughter keeps disparagingly commenting on them all.) Do these people really, truly, deeply mean what they say? I don’t know. My daughter doesn’t find them convincing, and I don’t know if I believe them either. But I believe Rose. She wants to be with Jack so much that she jumps out of the lifeboat onto the sinking Titanic. (You really can’t question someone’s sincerity when they’re willing to do something like that.)
She has this wonderful line just before the ship hits the iceberg. She tells Jack, “It doesn’t make any sense. That’s why I trust it.”
“Uh oh,” I told my daughter. “She thinks like me.”
“I want to fall in love,” she decided.
I understand Rose better as an adult. It must be a relief to have the overwhelming desire to jump onto the Titanic as it sinks. If you feel strongly enough to do something like that, then it must be the right choice. That’s got to feel very refreshing after the depressed inertia she experiences early in the film. When we first meet Rose, she’s stuck, miserably uncertain of how to extract herself from an impossible situation. After discovering her own heart during a whirlwind romance with Jack, she now acts decisively, certain of what she wants and how to move forward.
Plus looking seriously at Rose’s statements and behavior makes one of the movie’s most baffing and exasperating moments much more comprehensible.
I had so much trouble suppressing my laughter as my daughter, watching for the first time, began talking to Gloria Stuart at the very end of the film as she holds the valuable diamond necklace everyone’s been searching for in her hands and stares down at the ocean. “Don’t throw that in the sea!” my daughter said in a warning tone. “Don’t you do it! Don’t you dare do it! Don’t remember doing it in the past, and don’t do it in the pres…WHY DID YOU THROW IT INTO THE SEA????”
She went berserk. Suppressing laughter at her inevitable rage, I joked, “She’s like, “Haha! Another man’s dreams I can thwart! Thanks for listening to my three-hour story, Bill Paxton!”
It’s funny to joke about, but honestly, watching this time, for the first time I thought, “You know that actually makes perfect sense.” I don’t mean that it’s a logical thing to do. It certainly is not. I mean that Rose is not a logical person, and she never has been. Throwing that diamond into the sea is perfectly in character for her. That’s exactly the way she has always behaved. She’s been holding onto that necklace for years, not knowing what to do with it, unable to reach the right decision. Now, suddenly, she’s able to open her heart and tell her story about Jack, and she’s overcome by passion and suddenly knows what feels right to do, and she just does it.
“Remember,” I told my daughter, “this is Rose. She trusts things because they don’t make sense. And no matter how illogical it is, James Cameron will always be the King of the World, and you’re not.”
That last part was a joke, but watching this time, I realized that Rose actually reminds me a lot of James Cameron (who is the writer as well as the director). Of course, I don’t know James Cameron personally. But Rose reminds me of the way he presents himself in another film he made.
For just a second, forget Titanic. The Titanic-themed James Cameron project I really love is Ghosts of the Abyss. It’s only about an hour long, an Imax-3D film, the kind you see in museums. Up to that point (2003), it was the only film I’d ever seen that used the 3D to achieve its artistic vision and not as a pointless gimmick. There’s a moment near the end when we see the ship sink, and photographs of the real passengers on board who lost their lives jump out at us. I found it quite moving.
But the other reason I like that movie is that Bill Paxton and James Cameron are pretty funny together. Paxton panics easily, not unlike his character in Aliens. Meanwhile Cameron keeps giving him reason to panic. He’s had two incredibly sophisticated, expensive underwater cameras built that can slip through portholes and explore the wrecked ship. He sends the first camera on a risky mission and loses it immediately. He responds by immediately sending the only remaining camera on the very same mission. (Paxton so often pleads with Cameron not to do crazy things in this film that I have to assume they’re playing their dynamic up a bit. It’s not like a third party is making a documentary while they’re totally unaware of the camera.) But the way Cameron behaves in this film makes it easy to believe he’s the person who came up with Rose. You get the idea that he feels about the Titanic the way she feels about Jack in Titanic.
The love story in Titanic isn’t the only thing that worked better for me on this watch. Billy Zane’s performance seemed much better, too. I see my mom’s point about him being kind of stagey and over-the-top, but how else can you play that character? The Titanic is sinking, and Rose runs down because she has to save Jack. Cal also runs down because he’s trying to shoot Jack. Never mind that the ship is sinking and there are clearly no lifeboats for a man of Jack’s station. Cal feels it is absolutely necessary to murder him if possible. He’s just a very melodramatic guy. At another point in the film, he knocks over an entire breakfast table and screams at the top of his lungs to show Rose how angry he is with her. Well, he would have to, wouldn’t he? This is a woman who jumps onto sinking ships. If the man Rose loves begins their relationship by saving her from suicide and ends it by giving her a life-sustaining pep talk as he freezes to death in icy water, clearly the man Rose despises has to be similarly extreme. I think Billy Zane is just fine.
I paid closer attention to Rose’s mother this time, too, just because she’s played by Francis Fisher who also played Alice in Unforgiven. Early on in that film, my daughter found Alice by far the most sympathetic character in that movie. In Titanic, she hated Rose’s mother. Clearly Fisher knows how to elicit strong feelings from the audience (or at least from my daughter).
Most of the characters aboard the Titanic seem like just that, characters. They’re larger-than-life, over-the-top, the sort of people you’d expect to find in a story, not in real life (like David Warner’s Spicer Lovejoy who gets a wicked thrill from guaranteeing the demise of a man who was pretty much guaranteed to die, anyway, given his station and the circumstances). That used to annoy me, but if anything, it seems well done now. I kept thinking, “Yes, this all seems quite dramatic, but look who’s telling the story!” Our narrator is Rose (and we know what she’s like!), and she’s telling the story of her first love, set aboard the sinking Titanic. That story should be big and over-the-top. (The people who seem slightly more realistic in the story are all historical figures we already associate with the Titanic—Molly Brown (Kathy Bates), Thomas Andrews (Victor Garber). It’s almost like Rose knows we would expect to hear about certain people in any story of the Titanic and makes a point of mentioning her positive interactions with them.)
As an interesting parallel to old Rose/young Rose, the movie also gives us old Titanic/young Titanic. Among the film’s eleven Oscar wins are awards for Art Decoration/Set Direction and Costume Design. Young Rose and the new Titanic certainly are decked out in luxury. The film won Best Cinematography, too, and it still looks fantastic. (I’m wondering if the version we watched was restored or enhanced in some way because it looks like it was made yesterday.)
“This movie makes our TV look bigger,” I observed to my daughter. It certainly gives us the vast grandeur of the Titanic. (In the movie, no one calls it “the” Titanic, but dropping the article feels unnatural to me.) In so many shots, the ship fills the entire screen, and some of Rose’s hats do, too.
Though perhaps heavy-handed, the film’s pointed emphasis on class disparity and the entitled attitude of the wealthy passengers thrilled my daughter and is a strength of the film I hadn’t remembered. Any story of the Titanic should include reflections on hubris, thoughtless materialism, oblivious privilege, and this one certainly does.
What’s kind of great, though, is getting a lesson about hubris from James Cameron. The well-known boast from 1912 is, “Not even God can sink this ship.” Then Cameron comes along, meticulously recreates the Titanic and shows us in delight, “I’m going to sink this ship!” Not only does he make his own Titanic, he sinks it, too! Imagine how much work was poured into meticulously creating sets that were ultimately completely destroyed by the same production that created them. I’m not sure what to take from that, but I enjoyed both witnessing it and bearing witness to it.
Ultimately, though, my favorite aspect of the film remains the way it shows us tragic events that actually happened—the orchestra playing, the husband and wife dying together, the officers desperately trying to keep order as people scrambled for lifeboats.
While well-acted and entertaining, the Jack/Rose romance is contrived and pales in comparison to the historical events. It does, however, draw in viewers (especially young viewers). They watch for Jack and Rose, and then suddenly they find themselves caring deeply about events that happened in 1912. To me, it seems like the way Rose feels for Jack is the way Cameron feels for the Titanic, and he wants to make the story vivid and relatable to viewers so that they can appreciate his passion. (The very best thing about Winslet’s elaborate period costumes is that when she takes them off, her actions gain immediacy. She could be anyone in 1997 or 2021. We’re all the same when we’re falling in love or fighting for our lives.)
Best Scene Visually:
My daughter gasped in excitement when Rose says, “Jack, I want you to draw me like one of your French girls.” That’s because my husband loves to quote this line every time he first lies on an unfamiliar bed (like in a hotel). So she hears it a lot when we’re on vacation. This is one of the most memorable scenes of Titanic. What impresses me about it is the way DiCaprio’s eyes peek out over the top of the sketch pad. He’s holding it like a diagonal horizon below his intense gaze, and this fills the entire screen (just like the Titanic and Rose’s hat have done in earlier scenes).
Visually, Titanic is a strong, memorable film. Until this viewing, I hadn’t seen it for twenty years, yet a number of memorable images have stuck with me, and most of those do come from the love story part. This is not only because DiCaprio and Winslet are extremely photogenic and charismatic but also because to make us feel the heft of the destruction of the ship, Cameron must first present the Titanic to us in all its glory and splendor.
The way Rose and Jack keep pointedly returning to the prow of the ship is, of course, impossible to forget. First he’s celebrating without her. Then he’s helping her not jump, to save her life. Then he’s teaching her to fly. Then he’s helping her to jump, to save her life. They’re up there so much that my daughter and I started joking that if this film were set in the Pirates of the Caribbean universe, it would be a masthead origin story.
After this viewing, I can’t forget the scene of money being thrown all over Cal’s face. (Why would you think you could bribe someone who is about to die?)
Best, of course, may be the stark difference between the computer simulation of Titanic sinking, and the actual moment of the ship breaking apart near the end of the film. (Having screaming people present changes the way we experience the moment for sure.)
Best Action Sequence:
As I’ve said, I’m pretty taken with the moment Rose jumps out of the lifeboat back onto the ship. I’ve already talked about that moment, though. Most of what I love in Titanic comes from the historical material. But I do also like the part when Rose uses the axe to release Jack from his handcuffs. She has to act quickly and decisively to do this, compensating for lack of skill with focused desperation.
Best Scene:
I love watching the orchestra continue to play, and I’m also a big fan of the ongoing stress of the officers trying to fill the lifeboats. Also compelling is the moment when the ship breaks in half and Rose hangs on for dear life, staring into the face of another woman who falls.
I should probably also mention that my daughter loved Jack’s disruptive presence at the dinner party. There’s nothing she loves better at the moment than scoffing in the face of the establishment.
The Negatives:
Even though the love story worked better for me this time, I still think Titanic is a little unbalanced. After the ship hits the iceberg, the film becomes so much more compelling. It’s impossible to turn off at that point. (I know because my daughter and I always watch in increments, and we never found a good time to pause it. We had to see what was coming next.)
I remember in the fall of 1998, my boyfriend and I rented Titanic from Blockbuster. He hadn’t seen it before, so I was excited to watch with him. There two video cassettes, and we only got through the first one before I had to go back to my dorm. The next day he told me, “I hope you don’t mind. I watched the second half without you.” I did mind. If you split Titanic in two, and someone said to me, “You must choose only one half to watch,” I would pick the second half every single time. (Admittedly, though, a movie should build, and I liked the first half more on this watch than I ever have before.)
Also, some of the foreshadowing in this film is so heavy-handed that it’s a little ridiculous. (Jack talks about the agony of freezing to death in icy water when he convinces Rose not to jump. Later, when they’re in the car together finding a way to warm up in the cold, Rose notices, “You’re trembling,” and Jack tells her, “Don’t worry. I’ll be all right.”) Watching this time, I could never decide if moments like these were a strength or weakness of the film. On the one hand, they’re so pointed. On the other hand, though, I think of all of my sister’s twelve and thirteen-year-old friends obsessing over the movie. Obvious examples of foreshadowing would probably thrill them to no end. (You feel a thrill of horror for a character you love, and you learn to identify foreshadowing.)
I also wish we got a little more insight into the captain. Bernard Hill plays him well. I get the sense that he’s overwhelmed. But I wish we spent a bit more time with the character, wish that we were offered some further insights. He’s such an enigmatic figure.
For me, what takes away from the movie most is its own reputation. Titanic was such an enormous hit. It created so many pop culture ripples. Sometimes Titanic-inspired jokes, parodies, and memes overshadow the film itself, especially after all this time. Rose’s promise to Jack, “I’ll never let go,” is touching in the film. (Plus, it has nothing to do with physically letting go of him.) But it’s so hard not to think of years of mocking complaints about why couldn’t they both just fit on top, couldn’t they at least have tried?
And unfortunately, hearing “My Heart Will Go On” always makes me laugh. Céline Dion has a wonderful voice, and it’s a lovely song with apt, plot relevant lyrics. But I’ve heard it so many times. And (through no fault of Dion’s or Cameron’s) this song always makes me think of a bit on SNL, a Goth Talk sketch in which Will Ferrell is Baron Nocturna at the Goth prom, promising to play a chilling variation on his keyboard, “My Heart Will Go On…A Plate!!!!” But all he ever sings is, “Near, far, wherever you are…” He keeps getting interrupted, then resuming with that same bit of the song over and over again. Finally Molly Shannon complains, “Baron Nocturna, that’s just the real song!” I haven’t seen this sketch in years (and annoyingly couldn’t find it anywhere to watch on TV while trying to explain it to my daughter). The thing is, my sister and I recorded it on VHS and used to watch it so many times, laughing hysterically. It was extra funny to her because of all the real-life solo drama going on in her middle school choir. None of this is the movie’s fault, but I lost all ability to take that song seriously a long, long time ago.
Overall:
I enjoyed watching Titanic more with my daughter than I ever have before. For one thing, she’s the perfect age for it and actually enjoyed the love story (for once!). Also, whether the love story works for you or not, the movie is undeniably impressive. It’s such a spectacle. Time spent thinking and writing about it does not feel wasted. For me, the real draw is watching the Titanic sink and being confronted with elements of the real-life tragedy. The film has a lot to offer, though, and I think most people would enjoy watching it at least once, especially people familiar with the movie mainly from all the pop culture ripples it’s created. To some degree, all the memes and jokes about Titanic do it a disservice. It is a captivating film about a real event that continues to fascinate historians, oceanographers, and adventure lovers alike.
I asked my daughter just now, “What’s your favorite part of Titanic?” She paused, considered, then offered thoughtfully, “You know, I’ve come to terms with it, and it’s when she throws her diamond into the sea.”
Surprised, I asked with interest, “Is it really?”
With the world’s most withering look, she answered simply, “No.” Then she turned and walked out of the room.