A review Of Titanic (1997) by Ken Woods

Directed By: James Cameron. Cast: Kate Winslet (Roes Dewit Bukater), Leonardo DeCaprio (Jack Dawson), and Billy Zane (Cal Hockly). USA, Color, 195 minutes.

Theatres are still overflowing waves of movie cataclysms that started several months ago. Flooding the silver screen are Block busters such as aliens underwater (Sphere), escaped cons in conflagrations (Firestorm), bank heists in floods (Hard Rain), sentient subterraneans (Phantoms), and, soon to fall, more earth-threatening asteroids than you can shake d stick at (Armageddon). A cynical single man who searches for happiness (as good as it gets). The classic evil twin syndrome (The Man in the Iron Mask) Of course, these all serve as hors d'oeuvres for the summer's hottest entree--the return of everyone's favorite Japanese Thunder Lizard, Godzilla.

But still, even long after this competition sunk into oblivion, James Cameron's Titanic is still sailing, but not because of its superlative special effects and mid-boggling, built-to-scale ship. No--Titanic will live on because of the love story at its heart.

The formula's simple, really: excitement attracts, love endures.

Cameron's been working up to this. Over the past dozen years, he's established his niche as the premiere action filmmaker of our time. Consider his legacy to date: Aliens, Terminator and Terminator 2, The Abyss, and True Lies.

Each in its own way is a story about love: between heroine and helpless orphan (Aliens), lovers separated by time (Terminator), mother and son--and son and father figure-friend (Terminator 2), the newly-divorced (The Abyss), and the not so comfortably married (True Lies).

All of which leads us back down the pier to Titanic, North America's #1 box office hit since its release. It even beat out Star Wars by being the first film to gross more than a billion dollars. It was also the most expensive film ever having a production budget of over 200 million dollars.

Even if you haven't seen the film, you know the story. The largest ocean-going vessel of its time, the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on its Trans-Atlantic maiden voyage to New York in April 1912. But this time around it's a love story

The film abounds with unforgettable images: our first glimpse of the great ship at dockside; and, later, that long, terrible moment when she splits in two and her stern upends. Later, still, as lifeboats cleave a grim path through a heart-wrenching tableau of floating dead.

But to this viewer, the image most vivid is that of Rose's hand, palm flush against the window of the car locked deep in the ship's hold, the place where, at last, she and Jack can consummate their love. If ever a single cinematic image better embodied passion and surrender, I'd like to see it.

All this talk of love and not a word about the two actors whose performances bring together the star-crossed lovers who meet at sea. Well, not to dodge the iceberg here, but you can read volumes about Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio elsewhere. Personally, I found their on-screen chemistry less than convincing--their story too "big" somehow, as if the director was losing them in the magnitude of their surroundings. I wanted to see them in smaller moments, the stuff of which intimacy is made.

Of course, when you meet the love of your life on the world's largest ship and have only scant days to get it together through a myriad of barriers, I suppose your story has to be painted with broad brushstrokes.

But this is quibbling, and who cares, really? We may as well take feminist issue with Ilsa in Casablanca, for telling Rick he can make the decisions for both of them.

As millions have suspended belief to walk away into the fog with Bogie, here, too, filmgoers well into the millennium will stand with Jack and Rose at the bow of the great ship, lift their arms, and fly into the setting sun.

The tiny fact that 1500 plus people died slow agonizing deaths in the freezing waters the north Atlantic ocean or the main reason that they died was because another row of life boats would not have been aesthetically pleasing are all but forgotten once you leave the theater. The point that I am making is that the tragedy has been taken out of Titanic. James Cameron takes the horror of the sinking and turns it in to a plot element to keep the film going. I find this horribly inappropriate. But it is a love story so that makes every thing okay in the end. Rose lives on to lead a very fulfilled life of happily-ever-aftering.

It really disturbs me that the majority of people walked away from this film crying over the fact that jack died. Hello, what about the rest of the 1499 people frozen solid, literally. Has society become so callused that we can let details such as this go unnoticed? Apparently so. Because millions of people are now walking out of titanic thinking how cute Leo is and how desirable Kate Winslet would be at any given moment.

I was not disappointed with the images that Titanic presented but with the images that it did not present.