Titanic Review
by Doug Skiles (rskiles AT mail DOT win DOT org)April 22nd, 1998
TITANIC (1997)
Starring: You already know the whole damn list
Directed by: James Cameron, Written by: James Cameron
Rated PG-13 by the MPAA for disturbingly realistic violence, nudity, sexual situations, and strong language - in other words, it should've been an R
Reviewed by Doug Skiles
It's hard to say something about this movie that hasn't already been said. Yes, it's brilliant. Yes, the performances are all excellent. It's very well-written, and expertly directed. What else needs to be said?
Well, since you know that this film is an epic of excellence, maybe some of its flaws should be pointed out for a change. I'm not saying that it's not excellent. But somewhere, in the shuffle, we forgot that it's not perfect.
There's little things, like the fact that the special effects, usually excellent, also have clear flaws (obvious stunt doubles with texture-mapped Leo and Kate faces in some scenes, obvious CGI people in some daytime overhead shots). There's big things, like the fact that Billy Zane's Cal Hockley and David Warner's Spicer Lovejoy, who act as the villians, are ridiculously one-note and depicted as having no redeeming qualities. It's even taken so far as to have Lovejoy put Jack in a James Bond-style slow-moving death trap, where Spicer mocks Jack briefly and then leaves him to his fate, just as someone like Goldfinger would have done to Sean Connery. You almost expect the dialogue to go: "Do you expect me to talk? - Jack Dawson
"No, Mr. Dawson, I expect you to die!" - Spicer Lovejoy
That's never said, but the dialogue that IS there does sound a little cheesy at times. However, it's usually excellent, the stuff that Cameron's legacy is made of. All of his movies have dialogue that always sticks with us, from the emotional union between Ripley and Newt in ALIENS (1986) to the simple one-liners like "Hasta la vista, baby" in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (1991).
But perhaps the problem with the farthest-reaching implications is the destruction of moral standards. Why does Hollywood feel the need to always depict marriage as a trap? Is it because Hollywood marriages so rarely last? Maybe Cameron wanted to justify his own three marriages? And why do we always promote teen sex in Hollywood films? We give teenagers everywhere a license to have sex even when they feel nothing for their partners. We tell them to do what feels right, regardless of how they feel about the person they use to get it. When you see Jack and Rose in this film, they're like a latter-day Romeo and Juliet - star-crossed and doomed lovers, who fall in love with their idealized images of each other rather than the truths. Like Romeo and Juliet, they believe that they've found love, but they barely know one another - they've found infatuation, a temporary, yet powerful feeling that leads them to do anything in their power to protect their relationship. Only as the years go own, and Rose grows older, does she realize that, yes, Jack was someone she will always cherish for all that he did for her. But it's pretty doubtful that she could've understood that at her young age on that Titanic voyage, after having only two days with the boy.
Some of these problems sound serious, but Cameron's narrative is such effective storytelling that it doesn't matter very much. It's the thing of legend - an epic in the style of Hollywood's golden age. It can leave you disquieted, or it can leave you uplifted - or, more likely, both at once. Today, parents look at their children and smile, telling them how it felt to see STAR WARS (1977) in it original theatrical release. Years from now, the youth of today will have their own movie stories to share, and surely TITANIC will be one of them.
Rating: ****
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.
