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Titanic
****
Cinema
Releases - January 23, 1998
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Written and directed by James Cameron. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio,
Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Bill Paxton, Gloria Stuart, Frances
Fisher, Bernard Hill, David Warner, Victor Garber, Jonathan
Hyde.
James Cameron's "Titanic" begins
and ends with manipulation of the eyes. In its opening scenes I was struck
by its visual beauty and magnificence, and as it closed I was on the brink
of tears. Yes, it's constructed out of the materials of cheesy Hollywood
disaster pictures, and structured around a teenage romance, but it's also
been executed by a filmmaker of skill and care, and is the best film of its
genre ever made.
"Titanic" is not really about the Titanic's story,
at least not in the sense that its primary focus is exploring the questions,
fears and angers that the disaster inspires. How could it? It would then
be a big-budget rehash of Roy Baker's British masterpiece "A Night To Remember"
(1958), which was a perfect, stirring, scary account of a powerful
true story -- and also one of the few cinematic precedents of how it is sometimes
possible to make a deep film without complicated characters. Cameron's film
is from a different angle, focusing on two particular fictional people, and
seeing things through their eyes.
They are Jack Dawson (Leonardo Di Caprio) and
Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet). He is a poor kid from steerage whose
only possessions are his drawings, and who won his Titanic ticket in a hand
at poker. She's the orderly rich girl with somebody outgoing underneath,
who's destined for an unhappy marriage of convenience. These stereotypes
are not very interesting, but their exchanges are. The way the relationship
develops is convincing, from when they meet and can hardly understand each
others' language, to when they cling onto the split and sinking Titanic,
facing death together with the knowledge that they are each others'
world.
This love story, which makes up the greatest point
of interest in "Titanic", has puzzled some viewers -- how could a director
like Cameron make it work? It's not surprising to me that he could make romance
work -- we've seen him do it in "The Terminator", and his secret was the
likeability of the characters against the terrifying backdrop. What better
story than the Titanic's for this approach?
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are two of
the most interesting young screen actors around. Winslet is perhaps the best
since Jodie Foster. They are so loveable, and they work so well together,
that even if this had been an episode of "Love Boat" they would have made
it soar up into the realms of great drama. Their first and only argument
is so awkwardly beautiful; a scene where Jack teaches Rose how to spit is
charming and hilarious; their excited chases round the boat are exhilarating;
a scene at a steerage party is rousing; their gestures to each other seem
real; and I was truly excited and pleased for them when they made love. I
want to see these two in more films together -- not necessarily romances,
not with the class aspect, but just together. They are that kind of acting
duo you can't wait to see again, even though it's possible you never will...
like John Cusack and Minnie Driver, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, Robert
De Niro and Joe Pesci, John Travolta and Sam Jackson, Ryan O'Neal and Ali
MacGraw... the list goes on, and Leo and Kate must join it. They have been
justifiably Oscar-nominated before, Leo in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape",
Kate in "Sense and Sensibility", and I will be truly enraged in the unlikely
event that they fail to be nominated here.
As an event in these peoples' lives, "Titanic"
is a spellbinding picture, with the kind of dream-like structure that I'm
a sucker for. If, as a piece of history, it failed to shock, surprise or
scare me, that's not because of the film itself, but because I'm familiar
with the tale, and the techniques used to tell it. So many plot devices and
side characters in "Titanic" are simply lifted out of "A Night To Remember"
and put into a different context. For example, the men who want to "go out
like gentlemen", the constantly playing band, the depressed shipbuilder who
is asked "Don't you even want to make a try for it?". But because the film
still, to an extent, moved me like the story always does, it seems obvious
that a generation will grow up learning about history from "Titanic" just
as validly as I learnt from "ANTR". And when we weep for Jack and Rose, aren't
we weeping for symbols of the whole tragedy?
Now -- do I feel any conflict of interests, holding
"Titanic" close to my heart as well as the older film? No -- obviously there
are overlapping elements in the two, but be that as it may, they would make
great companion pieces; "ANTR" for the traumatic story itself, and mature
reflections on people actually facing their death when it was the last thing
in their minds (the press famously dubbed Titanic "The Unsinkable"); "Titanic"
for its own moving and ultimately heartbreaking Hollywood melodrama, and
the realistic panic -- in it we can feel the cold, see the blood, and more
clearly hear the screams of over a thousand people, all at once, in sheer
terror.
James Cameron may get the Best Director Oscar
for "Titanic", and he deserves it. It's an amazing visionary achievement,
one in a great career that has gone without one nomination. Aside from the
writing and production of quality pictures like "Strange Days" and "Point
Break", his work as a helmsman has covered horror in "The Terminator",
science fiction in "Terminator 2", action in "Aliens" and comedy in "True
Lies". Here the 43-year-old, four times married director gives us a great
romance, a great disaster and a great historical epic, while remaining true
to his reputation of great visual-effects movies.
Films like "Titanic" -- and, for that matter,
Toy Story", "Forrest Gump", "Apollo 13" and "Babe" -- never fail to blow
me away with their technical mastery and more than competently handled drama.
It's awe-inspiring how they can manage it, and considering Cameron's tendency
to spend, combined with the magnitude of this production, I'm surprised he
even managed to deliver it for $200million! Consider the amount of takes
needed, the amount of effects needed, the amount of crew, film stock, shelves
of china smashed, effects shots produced, mass of ship replica built, as
well as the filming of the modern-day scenes. These, by the way, are part
of a pretty absorbing narrative gimmick, using a 101-year-old Rose (Gloria
Stuart) to tell her story to explorer Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton). We see
the spooky remains of the real Titanic, filmed by cameras in present-day
submarines. The physics of the disaster are explained early on by salvage
crews on a TV monitor, and when the ship goes down in the story, we can
unconsciously follow every part of it.
I'm not saying I condone spending $200m on a film,
especially when it was a very risky investment -- nobody could have predicted
the reception this film is getting. But 'every penny is up there on the screen',
as the saying goes, and great films are priceless. "Titanic" is a great
film.
COPYRIGHT© 1998 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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