Ultimately, a unique and unusual film

Rating: 7/10 (18 March 2011)

Seeing as Titanic is one of the most financially successful films of all time and whose storyline is know by almost everybody, I have decided not to base this review so much on the content of the film. Instead I would prefer to to look at how this movie is in fact something of a one-off historically.
The uniqueness of Titanic in film history is down to a couple of inter-related things. Firstly, it stands apart as being a picture that combines state-of-the-art special effects technology within the frame-work of a romantic epic. Never before or since has this been done and it goes some way to explain the film's phenomenal success. This leads onto the other element of Titanic that is unusual – the fact that a mega-budget blockbuster was quite clearly aimed primarily at women. Again, in the age of the blockbuster this tactic is just not the done thing. James Cameron has always been an action film director who is very female-aware. From Aliens through to Avatar, his movies always feature unusually strong women in central roles; often as the main identifiable action figure. So perhaps it's not, therefore, surprising that with Titanic Cameron should create the ultimate female-centric special-effects blockbuster. This approach paid off of course, women especially went in droves to see it, and the film went super-nova at the box-office.
For the first half of the film we have a romance. A cross-class romance that is doomed from the start, in the same way as we all know the famous ocean liner is. The parallels between these two story lines ultimately compliment each other – the love story gives the disaster a personal edge, while in turn, the disaster gives the love story an epic tragic quality. The first time I watched the film I thought the romantic plot was an unnecessary and annoying addition, the second time I began to understand that it gives the film an emotional basis that it feeds off. I now have a great deal more respect for this most unfashionable and often vilified of Hollywood movies. It's uniqueness in film history too in terms of its approach and audience demographic is also something worth at least a little respect. It's unusual combination of special-effects driven action with period-set romance is not likely to be repeated very soon, and Titanic, therefore, will at the very least remain a one-off in film history.