home | search | poll | current columns

"Titanic" sails By Steve Lansingh | Every few years, the American public is treated to the tale of a movie whose budget has spun wildly out of control. When we see the final result, like with Waterworld and Cutthroat Island, we're puzzled as to how a studio could have spent so much money on something so trivial. Titanic is the first movie in decades to break that trend. At $204 million, it's the most expensive movie ever made, but when you walk out of the theater you feel as though every penny was well spent. James Cameron, its director, certainly thought so: Even though he devoted three years of his life to this film, he felt so strongly that every dollar was important to his movie that he gave back his entire salary -- for writing, directing and editing the picture, as well as the percentage of the profits he was entitled to -- to help defray the studio's loss. Many people are surprised that Cameron, who usually sticks to science fiction and action pictures, could suddenly concoct such a deeply felt love story and stunningly accurate historical film. But his earlier work reveals that's he's always shown painstaking attention to detail, he's always prioritized the love story over fancy effects, and he's always scoffed at the people who trumpet technological advances as truly progressive. His Terminator films were first and foremost love stories, first between Kyle and Sarah, and then between Sarah and her son. The Abyss was about the rekindled love between Bud and his wife, and Aliens was about Ripley's maternal love for Newt. Human arrogance is always the true enemy, whether it shows up in the form of a Terminator, an alien, or the judgment of an underwater intelligence. Titanic is essentially what Cameron has always done, it's just that by adopting the genre of drama, more people are beginning to see his talents than just sci-fi nuts. This time, the human arrogance is wrapped up in the "unsinkable ship," and the love story is a more traditional one between the star-crossed lovers Jack and Rose. Rose (Kate Winslet) is fiancˇe to a wealthy heir, Cal (Billy Zane), but she is struggling to break free from the upper-crust society that stifles and traps her. She wants to marry for love, but it turns out she might have to marry Cal out of love for her mother, who is depending on the match to fill their depleted bank accounts. Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a penniless orphan from steerage who makes his way from place to place with his talent for drawing portraits and his luck at poker. He's a drifter, and the tight societal chains that bind Rose make him angry. He wants her to break free, but after enough time with her, he realizes that he wants her to break free so she can be with him. There's not much more to tell than that: they fall in love, then the ship sinks and threatens to tear them apart -- that is, if Cal doesn't do it first. But it's the way Cameron puts those elements together that makes the film incredible. For starters, Cameron bookends his story with a modern-day scenario in which treasure-hunters are looking for a rare diamond that was lost aboard Titanic. They discover a nude drawing of a young woman who was wearing that diamond the night the ship sank. Rose, now 101, recognizes Jack's drawing of her, and the expedition leader (Bill Paxton) invites her to come out to the wreckage to see if she can help them locate it. This technique does several things for the story: First, we are able to see the modern-day wreckage (Cameron shot most of these sequences at the real Titanic), which is hauntingly well-preserved. It grounds us in reality to see firsthand the results of the tragedy we are about to witness, and to remind us that this is indeed a fact of history, not just a fancy Hollywood concoction. Secondly, it allows Cameron to explain how the ship sank, so when we're watching it sink, we understand the progression of how it ripped in half. Thirdly, we're able to witness the event through the eyes of the elderly Rose. We're all aware that older people have a much different perspective on life, so we're able to see Rose's reaction to the tragedy both as a teenager and as an old woman -- a difference that acutely reveals how much of a touchstone this part of her life had become. Titanic is a movie of contrast and comparison. Cameron is able to give us both intimate details of the voyage and the grand spectacle of it all. He is able to contrast all that is arrogant and selfish in humanity with the sacrifice and nobility that we can embody. He show us the carefree invulnerability of adolescence that Jack and Rose embrace, and then confronts them with the terrifying reality of mortality. We witness the past and the present; we get to know the upper-crust socialites and the down-to-earth workers; we recognize the capitalistic value of an item and the ocean of memories that make it equally valuable to someone. But above all else, Titanic's magic is that is makes you believe you're on the mighty ship, both as it sails and as it sinks. Cameron constructed a model of the Titanic that is 90% to scale, and he's able to convince you, with his wondrous special effects, that the ocean liner is once again at sea. He gives us wide sweeping shots of the boat from bow to stern, where we can see the individual people roaming about the deck like small insects. In the scenes were the ship is sinking, we not only hear the cries of the helpless, but we can see individuals clamorimg for their lives, even when the entire ship is in frame. Titanic's sinking is terrifyingly convincing. Luxurious staterooms are slowly water-logged; water bursts through doors; trapped passengers watch in horror as the water creeps higher and higher up their bodies. The sheer size of the vessel is evident as passengers leap over its railings into the icy sea. By the time you're with some of the survivors on a lifeboat, you feel as though you too have survived the ordeal. Then the camera shows the hundreds of screaming people in the black sea who beg for you to return -- and you're suddenly aware of the survivors' fear of returning, knowing full well that those who bob helplessly in the water would fight or kill you for your seat in the lifeboat. It's without doubt the film's most disarming moment. Cameron has been faulted for his dialogue in Titanic, which is in the style of epic romance, but somehow feels forced into that style. (Rolling Stone's Peter Travers said it was written with "a tin ear for dialogue," but nevertheless awarded it best picture of the year.) But I think Cameron wrote it that way on purpose. For starters, none of his other pictures has ever had such hokey dialogue. But more than that, it's the fact that Rose is telling the story in flashback. She tells it as if it were a movie in 1912, the time of her youth -- one of those silent movies with overly elaborate dialogue written on placards, the type of movie with a mustache-tweaking villain and a pair of improbably but deeply committed lovers. Titanic might not have the most original story ever written, but, as Roger Ebert said, you don't pick the most expensive movie of all time to reinvent the wheel. What the movie does do perfectly is show us why movies were created. The reason movies moved from nickelodeons to the big screen was because people liked seeing things as a community, and because the big screen allowed viewers to suspend disbelief in the illusion. Titanic will transfer badly to video because the power of the film are those sweeping shots of the ship that make you realize why Titanic was such a extraordinary ship, and those wide shots of people scrambling for safety on a sinking ship. They put you there, back in 1912, like no other medium could. This is why they make movies.