Titanic Review
by Jeremiah Rickert (rickert AT agora DOT rdrop DOT com)December 31st, 1997
Titanic
A Review
By Jeremiah Rickert
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Bill Paxton, and Gloria Stuart.
Directed by James Cameron.
I really wanted to hate this film. It is part of what I call the Forrest Gump syndrome, you hear a film hyped, you hear Oscar Buzz before it is even released, and you think in the back of your head, for these reasons I want to hate this movie. I was wrong with Forrest Gump, and I was wrong with Titanic.
Much of what has been said about this film is absolutely true, at the end of the film, it does not seem that you've been sitting there for over three hours, and if the ship were not on the bottom of the Atlantic, it is quite possible you would want more.
The film is a story within a story. The framing story concerns a treasure hunter (Bill Paxton) who is being bankrolled by several "interests" to find what is thought to be the most valueable diamond in the world. It was last known to be aboard Titanic in the possession of a Pittsburgh Steel Tycoon. In navigating the wreck he finds a safe which he believes holds the diamond, however upon opening it, all he finds is muck, water, and a packet of drawings, one of which of a naked girl wearing the diamond. He shows the picture on TV, knowing/hoping someone is going to know the person. A elderly woman (Gloria Stuart) phones him and claims she is the woman in the picture, identifying the diamond by its name. She is flown out to the ship and tells the story of the diamond, and her voyage on the Titanic in a flashback.
Her flashback is the meat of the movie. We are introduced to Rose (Kate Winslet) a young woman who is promised to be engaged to, you guessed it, a steel tycoon, played by Billy Zane (Phantom). Also, proclaming this is the luckiest day of his life, artist Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) wins a third class ticket on the Titanic and runs to get to the ship before she sails. It is obvious that Rose is not conent with her match and we later learn that her mother is bankrupt and must insure their class status. Class is one of the major themes here, and there is a clever duality where it refers to not only one's position in society, but ones position in the ship. Literally, the first class people were on the top of the ship, and the lower class, were on the bottom. Rose is not a usual girl of high breeding and feels a slave to her class rather than a part of it. She is so distressed that she would rather die than marry. She is about to throw herself off of the boat when Jack saves her. They have instant chemistry, but it is obvious that she is still slightly bound by her class strictures, and slowly but surely (but not too slow) she begins to loosen up even more as she moves closer and closer to Jack.
Her fiance and his Valet (David Warner) see her relationship with Jack blooming and seem to do all they can to stop it, including handcuff him to a post when the ship is going down.
It is difficult to expound futher on the plot without giving too much away. The acting in this film is top notch especially with people in the smaller rolls. Victor Garber (Godspell, Sleepless in Seattle) is brilliant as the cathartic Andrews, the designer of the unsinkable ship. He is a tragic figure of Greek and Shakespearian proportions. A man who thought he could question the gods, indeed, someone does say that even "God couldn't sink her" when referring to the ship. The leads, DiCaprio and Winslet were good, but could have been better. DiCaprio will forever seem 12 years old, and it is difficult to see him as an adult in any role. Winslet was facially brilliant, so many of her expressions conveyed emotions and sometimes I could almost imagine fire behind her eyes, and sometime great sadness. Zane oozed smarmy evil, as he has done in so many other films, and did it with style too. Rose's Mother as well, conveyed her personal terror at having to work and losing her position. Kathy Bates as Molly Brown showed us what new-money is, and what it meant to the other people with money. Finally, I cannot say too much about Gloria Stuart, she has been absent from film for several years, and she is what sucked me into the film emotionally before we even had a single flashback. Her ice blue eyes held an incredible amount of emotion, laughter, pain, and in a way, I looked forward to her appearances in the film.
Now on to Cameron's direction. It was pretty good. He created several short moments in this film that were very moving. The string quartet as the ship was going down, was something that could have been played as a comic moment, in fact, some people in the audience laughed. However, these four melancholy gentleman, no one ever listens to them, why do they bother, but they sit down and they play and they play and they play knowing that they are most likely going to die. The fades from Rose and Jack "flying" on the front of the ship to the wreck, and later from Young Rose's eyes to Old Rose's eyes, during the sketching scene, I sat back in my seat and said wow, it was such a little thing, but it seemed to powerful, it locked the framing story into the other in a way that is stronger than most films and even books ever do. There was obvious, strong, connections between the two. Finally, one of the most simple shots was just of an old couple in bed as the ship was sinking and it was a short, but extremely moving moment in the film. Even though nothing is said about them, they are not characters we have met, but we see them there and we immediately think that is love.
I have gotten to the bottom of my review and I have not even mentioned special effects. That is a surprise in a Cameron film, because his name is often synonymous with them. In this case, however, you aren't seeing a special effect, you are seeing THE TITANIC, the real one. The CGI effects are superior in some cases, and only the very carefully watching eye can catch them. Only the daytime shots of the ship betrayed the special effects, at night, the shots were spectacular. Same with the shots of the engines turning, it was exciting, it was loud, and it was powerful.
The only thing I found a bit weak in this film, was the writing of dialogue. It is a difficult thing to do in any film, some writers have a gift for it, some do not. In this case, though, considering the rest of the film, it is often easy to forgive. It did bother me a bit, however. Other than that, this is an excellent film. It was far better than I would have expected, and I am glad I saw it.
Of the $3.50 I paid to see it, it was worth $6.25
(c) 1997 Jeremiah Rickert
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Jeremiah "Spassvogel" Rickert
6'7" 320 lbs of Dr. Pepper and Pez Candy.
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
