A national disaster

Rating: 10/10 (7 September 1999)

Am I the only one who got this movie? A luxury liner, bound for the States, is struck by an iceberg and, with inadequate safeguards, sinks quickly, claiming the lives of 1,500+ souls. This movie, in very delicate ways, brings this point home.
By intertwining the lives of a first-class passenger, Rose, and a third-class passenger, Jack, the moviegoer is thrust into both worlds. Slowly, and tragically, we witness how money means everything in the early 1900's, to the point of overlooking security, thus eliminating an adequate number of lifeboats because "they make the deck look too cluttered." I never knew, until seeing this film, that White Star staff literally locked the gates so that third-class passengers could not emerge to board the boats. Irish genecide.
The computer-generated images of the Titantic tearing apart and sinking are breath-taking, so much so that when I first saw this film in the theatre, viewers alternately wept and gasped at the inhumanity of it all. Those poor victims of a money-worshipping world. The circumstances of it all truly disgusts me.