Watch it on the big screen, but not on TV

Rating: Null/10 (9 January 2002)

Technically, "Titanic" is outstanding. It attests to Cameron's (and crew's) knowledge of how to use the big screen effectively. The overwhelming size of the subject (the ship, that is) is suited to the largest screen you can find.
However, if you watch it on television, the models and special effects are less dazzling and less overwhelming, and you fall prey to the urge to pay attention to the plot, characters and dialog, which reveals just how weak a movie this really is.
Where did Cameron go right? He combined a Harlequin romance with "Terminator". The first half or so of "Titanic" is a generic romance story, which never fails to draw audiences. But to keep it from becoming a "chick flick," it turns into action and suspense as soon as the ship starts to sink. "What *other* reason can we come with for the heroes to go back down into the sinking ship?" seemed to be the watchword for the plot after that. When Kate finally emerged for the last time, I fully expected her to turn around and say, "Oh, wait! I left the stove on and the windows open!" and run back downstairs one more time. So it's calculated to appeal to the widest audience imaginable--"Gone With the Wind" meets "Die Hard." Looking at the box office figures, I'd say he calculated that appeal pretty well.
Where did he go wrong?
(1) Well, I shouldn't go into how bad I thought most of the romance scenes were. A lot of people believed them, so it seems to be a matter of taste. Personally, I believed the romance scenes about as much as I believe that Milli Vanilli did their own singing. I don't know whether to attribute it to bad writing, bad directing, bad acting or just plain bad karma. The romance scenes feel very conflicted, as if the actors were wishing for better lines, or as if they were having some disagreement with the director about interpretation. You can always tell the difference between an actor who is into the part and one who is just going through the motions, following orders with little understanding of his character's motives. Leonardo's courtship of Kate felt like the latter more than the former.
(2) He got confused by his own narrative. All the scenes on board the fatal voyage are supposed to be seen through the eyes of Kate's character. Yet we see things she couldn't possibly have known about or guessed. The narrator's point of view slips back and forth between first-person and fly-on-the-wall, but it keeps insisting that it's only first-person narrative.
(3) So, what did she tell the diving team about the fate of the jewel? The whole reason that she's telling them this story is that they're searching for a jewel in the wreck, and she claims to know where it is. Throughout the movie, the camera is very careful to follow this jewel so that we know all about its comings and goings and can track its path through the sinking ship. In the end, we know the fate of the jewel, and she knows the fate of the jewel, but we never know what she actually said about it. Did she lie to them? No, the lie would have been acted out in the flashback she was telling (unless what we were seeing wasn't really a representation of her first-person narrative--see previous paragraph). Did she tell them the truth? I think it's possible to avoid spoiling the plot by simply answering, "Most definitely not." Did her listeners get so engrossed by her narrative that they felt ashamed at their greed and became resolved to abandon their quest and devote their lives to more spiritual causes? Don't know. The movie doesn't tell us. So the one thing that provided the impetus for the whole story is abandoned, and this thread is left dangling loose. Don't pick at it too much, it might cause the whole thing to unravel.
Viscerally, "Titanic" is engrossing. Intellectually, it falls far short of the mark it seems to be aiming at. If you've never seen it and plan to see it, just accept as your mantra William Hurt's line from "The Big Chill"--"Sometimes you just have to let art . . . flow over you."