Titanic Review
by "Gary Pollard" (gpollardno AT spamasiaonline DOT net)January 20th, 1998
Titanic - The Most Expensive Curate's Egg
"Titanic" is, like the famous curate's egg, "good in parts", but uneven overall.
Firstly, I like the idea of the framing story. I like it because it adds to the sense of the transitoriness of life. It's rather like seeing someone dig up the remains of an Egyptian mummy when you have just been seeing a movie about the love life of the Egyptian. I think the two era plot structure is one that works well.
Secondly, I do like much about the romance. Class was an important part of the times. It has been said, and not only by the publicists, that the sinking of that ship marked the beginning of the end of a certain idea of society. It's not a bad idea to use a cross class love story to do that. I also like the idea of her feeling stifled by convention and feeling she wants to escape. I like the idea that Jack liberates her to lead the life she wants. All this was POTENTIALLY excellent.
Thirdly, I liked the time machine element of the film. That it places us ON the boat, with many people whose fates we care about (even though not - for me - the lovers). Most disaster movies have a big problem in that we don't get time to learn anything about anybody, or to care about them. It was fascinating to walk that boat, looking exactly as it did look (there's a computer game that is also very good for this - the art direction matches absolutely). Cameron did me a favour in introducing me to the real historical characters. All that stuff fascinated me.
Fourthly, I loved that James Cameron fell in love with his material and got obsessive over it. I think that when it came to dealing with the reality this showed. He did not take too many liberties with it.
Fifth. The scale. The sheer scale of the movie. It took a lot of ambition and determination to get it done. I admire Cameron for that.
Sixth. The engine room and the furnaces. A glimpse into the hell of the manual labourer. The movie showed well how one class slaved to make life pleasant for another. There was a WORLD on that ship. It's a strong metaphor for an entire society. I'd like to have seen more middle class though.
Seventh. Transitions. Past to present. Life to death. The feeling that we all love in the face of death, and because of that we should love as fully and as well as can in whatever time is allotted to us.
Eighth. Tragedy. The film makes us more aware of something that existed in our consciousness but that had not really been brought home to many of us. The scenes of the ship going down were disturbing and breathtaking. As they should have been. We had time to see who was dying and how they died. We had time to see the bravery and the cowardice. And I, for one, loved the musicians. Incredible to have had that kind of courage. Not the kind that gets you publicity or does you any good. Just a devotion to duty. The stern crashing down on survivors, the boat rowing through the dead. These are images no-one who has seen them will ever forget. Even an image of crockery falling off a dresser had power.
Ninth. Aftermath. Even in Ismay's face, as he sits in the boat of survivors, we know this is a man who is aware he is ruined. There are stories that go beyond the boundaries of the movie. Everything is not wrapped up, but hints are there. I liked how she hid from Cal too. Much better than the conversation in the first draft, although that conversation had made Cal a bit more sympathetic.
There's more too. When I reviewed this movie I told people they had to go see it. Maybe it is worth half a dozen Oscars, as before. I have been telling people they should see it all week.
So, yes there is much to be grateful for. I talk about this movie, because almost alone of movies I've seen lately it deals with big subjects, and big ideas. If only it had raised the central story to this level I would have found it perfect. And there aren't many movies you can say that about.
So much about the film is good, very good, even excellent, that it's a pity that other things let it down so badly.
When Cameron is dealing with reality, as with the sinking itself, I think it's terrific. But the problem is that Cameron is a good director but a bad scriptwriter. Billy Zane's character is a melodramatic pantomime villain complete with evil henchman. At no point in the movie does he rise above being a one-dimensional bad guy.
It's this black and white sense of morality, that , in my view, brings the movie down. Zane is so vile that the mother might as well sell her daughter into white slavery as force her to marry him. There'd have been other, better prospects.
In this movie, poor people are all good. Rich people are all bad, unless they were poor people originally.
Much about Titanic is great. I think it brings home the event far better than I'd ever have expected, but if that central love story had been about real flesh and blood people, with their mixture of good and bad, it would have been better. It could have been one of the greatest movies ever made, but in its attempt to pander to today's audience (Kate Winslet giving someone the finger, as an example) it is less.
Review after review, has noticed clunky dialogue, stupid anachronisms, the unsuitability of diCaprio, and a willingness to pander to contemporary audiences. In other words the script is immature and aimed at today's immaturity of audience attention.
The "defy authority" stuff turns it into Titanic meets Porky's. Of course, audiences liked "Porky's" too. Fine. More people buy pocket romances than Tolstoy. It does not make them better.
It was embarrassing in old period movies where people said: "There's that young Beethoven. He's going to be great some day." It's just as embarrassing when Cameron does similar things with Picasso and Freud. It's a plain stupidity to put Picasso's "Les Demoiselles D'Avignon" on the ship. Unless he's trying to suggest the girl was stupid enough to buy a forgery.
James Cameron almost had a great work of art on his hands. He did not. He is a clumsy scriptwriter. The movie would NOT have been made worse had the characters been more credible. It would have been better. It was set in Edwardian times. That does not mean the script has to be Edwardian melodrama. In fact "The Age of Innocence" or any Austen adaptation can see more complexity in their characters.
There are things in this movie that are great, yet at the end of the movie I cared more about the Captain than the lovers. Almost every character based on a real person was better drawn than the fictional ones.
Why did we have to sit through clunky lines like Bill Paxton's "I never got it before. I get it now"? Or "A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets"?
If the film is already good, what would Cameron have lost by making it better? And a good script collaborator with less of a tin ear and more of a sense of period would have helped.
This film deserves several Oscars. But not best script. The cheapest thing to fix, in all that budget, would have been the script.
Gary
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.
