"Life's a gift"

Rating: 10/10 (16 February 2012)

It's sometimes difficult to assess a movie that was such a phenomenon in its day. Titanic was a gigantic hit upon release, talked about everywhere, unavoidable. In parallel to its massive popularity there was also a backlash of people denouncing it as clichéd and overly sentimental, a lot of whom were probably deliberately disliking it because of its ubiquity. Now, it's of that awkward age where it's too recent to merit classic status, but too distant to still really be talked about much. As such its standing in posterity seems to be undecided, as yet.
Historical romantic epics like this have long been around, and have long done well at box offices and awards ceremonies. And yes, they may be formulaic, but there is a certain craft in ticking all the boxes. Titanic works by bringing us in, with those opening scenes, with the position of a clinical observer of the wreck, as we might have seen it in books or documentaries. The framing narrative has a modern familiarity that we can relate to. We are then gradually eased back into the past, and the story of the ship and those who sailed aboard her becomes humanized. And I'm not just referring to the central love story. In writing his screenplay, James Cameron goes to lengths to pick hundreds of tiny strands, from the real fates of historical personages to brief flashes of unnamed figures. This broad, human retelling of a great disaster gives Titanic a wonderful richness, not to mention a deeper poignancy.
Cameron was at this point best-known for his blockbusting actioners like Aliens and the Terminator movies, so as a director he might have seemed out of his depth on Titanic. But Cameron was always a professional, never a show-off, and he could handle weighty subjects with maturity. He doesn't faff about with the camera, usually keeping it still while all the movement is within the frame. And of course, when the movie turns more action-orientated during the ship's sinking, his experience puts him in good stead. The collision with the iceberg is so suspenseful that, every time I see it, I still hope the ship will turn in time. Throughout the movie there are a lot of point-of-view shots, more than most filmmakers dare to use these days, but the idea is to bring us close to the sensation of being there. But perhaps Cameron's greatest strength is his finding of an apt image to tell a story in an instant, from a man with his family frantically thumbing through a translation book to find his way off the ship, to Ismay's guilty face against the side of the ship as he is lowered down.
The studio took a gamble in allowing Cameron to cast two lead players who were as young and inexperienced as Winslet and DiCaprio, but it paid off. Winslet is not a traditional beauty, but she has a vivacious personality that makes her attractive and instantly likable. At first glance DiCaprio seems to have been hired for his looks, but he proves to have a deep sincerity, such as the when he confronts Winslet and confesses his feelings towards her. And after all it's moments like this where a performance counts the most. But what really makes these two work is their believable youthfulness, and that eager rapport between them. Passionate love stories that take place over a day or two can easily seem a bit false, but Winslet and DiCaprio seem so great together the briefness of their affair is irrelevant.
This diamond of a movie is not, I'll admit, without a few flaws. Despite the brilliant construction of the screenplay, the dialogue is woefully trite. The special effects are typically over-ambitious '90s CGI, with texture-less surfaces and too many fake people (although to be fair it still looks better than, say, a scale-model would). But whereas these problems would stick out like sore thumbs in a lesser picture, Titanic has such a grand sweep and emotional power that they become insignificant. I hope cinematic history will judge Titanic well, because regardless of hype and counter-hype, it really is everything a movie should be.