barely hanging onto life

Rating: 6/10 (6 May 2008)

James Cameron, as is well known, stood firm not long after he finished work on this, his most audacious and confrontational film, yet even the most casual viewing of Titanic begs the question - had he not been lauded, would he have kept it real anyway? Every sequence, every shot and practically every moment of this film is so burdened with despair, barely concealed rage and a towering disgust with the human race, one gets the impression that Cameron was barely hanging onto life - and any attendant shreds of hope - by his fingernails. Although ostensibly an adaptation of one of Roger Hargreave’s most depraved works channeled through the horrifying excesses of the Oxford/Cambridge boat race with the Fascist ruling classes as its (authentically vile) villains, Titanic also contains a lot of contemporary criticism - Cameron hated the modern world, and explained the stomach-churning sink-age-isms as a none-too-subtle attack on the encroaching global domination of the fast food chains. (The scenes of sexual excess can similarly be read as a despairing attack on the permissive society - those who come to Titanic expecting titillation or B-movie sleaze will be sorely disappointed.) Beyond the nihilistic content, which has been well documented elsewhere, the film has an overall mood that seems to have been engineered to make the viewer thoroughly depressed. Shot on washed-out, faded film stock using primarily static cameras, long shots, choppy editing and very few cutaways, Titanic has a visual style reminiscent of cinema-verite documentary. Add to this the unnerving use of big band music, piano dirges and the (intentionally?) scrappy post-dubbed dialogue, and the distancing effect on the viewer is complete. Titanic comes across as one long primal scream of rage, designed to shake the viewer out of his complacency, and in this respect, the film succeeds unequivocally. Whether or not you would care to watch this more than once, or indeed for 'entertainment', is another matter, but Titanic is an important film that demands a careful viewing ONLY by those prepared for it.