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Titanic

a review by Jeffrey Overstreet 

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Titanic was the most awe-inspiring special-effect extravaganza of 1998. Sadly, it’s also the most overrated works of big-screen storytelling.

James Cameron deserves some measure of congratulations. Like Frances Ford Coppola did with Apocalypse Now, Cameron put his reputation on the line, set aside his own director’s fee, and took on a project so immense and so ludicrous that he and his production were being laughed at for years. It was going to be a disaster, like the subject of the movie itself. Fortunately for him, and for moviegoers, the thing is no shipwreck. (Sorry. Couldn’t help it.)

The Titanic itself is the greatest achievement in digital animation since the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. This ship is a beauty – lushly decorated, filled with music, laughter, and life. In spooky, absolutely-real deep-sea footage, we first encounter the wreck of the real Titanic. Scientists explain it for us, quickly acquainting us with each room of the sunken ship, so that by Disaster Time we know where and when the chief characters should or shouldn’t be. The question is, of course, not whether the ship will come apart – but how it will come apart, and who will be left standing.

Cameron wants his story to be so involving that we forget about the disaster. Well, he doesn’t quite do that. The story is a little flimsy – a Hollywood romance with shallow characters in an all-too-familiar “Rich People are Evil” melodrama.

We do want the poor-boy hero Jack to convince the rich-girl Rose to run from her stuffy, arrogant, prejudiced family and familiars. But what is she running to?

To Jack, of course. And Jack Dawson, her “savior”, is an irresponsible twerp of a young man, full of hormones. He doesn’t fool us for a moment that he’s actually being noble – he’s got the hots for a pretty girl, and that’s about it. This makes his heroism at the end seem a little too abrupt, ring a little false.

And no, the fact that he is a talented sketch artist of the human form does not make him a “deep soul.” His behavior is clearly that of a brash and arrogant kid. Especially since the most intelligent thing he can find to say about Monet is, “Look at his use of color!” Jack’s “art” is just an excuse for Kate Winslet to be stripped of all her upper-class clothing. (How did this movie escape with a PG-13 rating?)

In spite of the soap opera, the actors are clearly enjoying themselves, and we have fun following them around.

Leonardo DiCaprio can make even the simplest character come to life, and somehow he makes even the worst dialogue sound compelling. He makes us believe in this American rogue, headed for home full of an adolescent’s self-centered charisma.

Kate Winslet does make a good maiden-in-distress. And she manages to find chemistry with DiCaprio in spite of the fact that she looks ten years older than him.

The love story is spirited, but not profound or convincing. Like this year’s other fantastic-but-flawed Hollywood film Contact, Titanic is preoccupied with two young people who know what they’re rebelling against, but have no sense of what they’re running toward. They’re smart about what’s wrong, but foolish about what’s right. They seem to trust their hormones more than they trust anything else. That’s a dangerous lesson for young viewers, one that ensures a romance won’t last long, even on dry land.

The shifts from romance to terror with the sudden impact of a ship hitting an iceberg. And this is where Cameron’s strengths kick in. We feel the panic slowly rising. We see the passengers in denial. Then, disbelief. Then, terror. Then, chaos. We feel the value of the lives on the boat, feel the weight of the tragedy.

And what a tragedy. It’s not easy to watch the wages of sin when played out at this scale. When people are selfish, innocent people get hurt. This is the kind of disaster that drives people to ask how God can be a good god and allow things like this to happen. But that answer is clear in the film – this happened because of the foolishness of human beings. There are a few moral lessons to be learned here.

But alas, Titanic is like Contact in another way. Here’s another sad instance of Christianity being portrayed clumsily and shallowly, shown only as an empty hope. And there’s a hollow statement made about one of the film’s heroes – that the rescuer saved another person “in every way a person can be saved.” I don’t think Cameron meant to make a big statement about Christianity; nevertheless, Titanic joins innumerable Hollywood movies that portray faith in God as a laughable, insufficient, worthless pursuit, and the best we can do is hope to survive another day. Too bad.

While Titanic illustrates the wages of sin in powerful ways, it never goes beyond simple moralizing about greed and pride. But the spectacle of the ship will enchant you, and the tragedy of the victims will haunt you for many days after you’ve seen it.

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Writer/director – James Cameron
Director of photography – Russell Carpenter
Editor – Conrad Buff, James Cameron and Richard A. Harris
Music – James Horner
Production designer – Peter Lamont
Costume designer – Deborah L. Scott
Special visual effects – Digital Domain
Producers – James Cameron, Jon Landau and Rae SanchiniParamount Pictures and 20th Century Fox. 197 minutes. Rated PG-13.STARRING: Leonardo DiCaprio (Jack Dawson), Kate Winslet (Rose DeWitt Bukater), Gloria Stuart (Rose Dawson Calvert), Billy Zane (Cal Hockley), Kathy Bates (Molly Brown), Frances Fisher (Ruth DeWitt Bukater), Bernard Hill (Capt. E. J. Smith), Victor Garber (Thomas Andrews) and Bill Paxton (Brock Lovett).

Tags: Review Archive - T

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Film Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.