The Best Films Of The 90's: Titanic

Rating: 10/10 (24 August 2006)

Titanic (1997): Starring Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Billy Zane, Bill Paxton, Gloria Stuart, Frances Fisher, Kathy Bates, Suzy Amis, Lewis Abernathy, Victor Garber, Bernard Hill, David Warner, Jonathan Hyde, Nicholas Cascone, Danny Nucci, Jason Barry, Johnny Phillips, Ewan Stewart, Ion Gruffud, Richard Graham, Eric Braeden, Michael Ensign, Bernard Fox, Charlotte Chatton, Rochelle Rose, Jenette Goldstein, Martin Jarvis, Rosalind Ayres, Alexandra Owens, Rocky Taylor, Gregory Cooke, Elsa Raven, Lew Palter, Richard Ashton, Oliver Page, Francisco Valdez, Ellen O'Brien, Lorenz Hasler, Thomas Furi, Ferenc Szedlak, Bela Szedlak, Werner Giger, Patrick Murphy, Stephen Wehmeyer, Shep Lonsdale, Ed Forsyth, Scott Hislop, Bobbie Bates, Kris Anderson, Samantha Hunt, Sean Nepita, Brendan Connolly, Martin Lang, Nick Meaney, Garth Wilton, Johnny Martin, Mike O'Neal, Steven Quale, Stephen Wolfe Smith...Director James Cameron, Screenplay James Cameron.
"God himself could not sink this ship!!"..........
To many 1997's "Titanic" was the definitive love story of the 1990's and now, almost 10 years later, it's still fondly remembered, even if the film has lost the powerful impact it once had and some people shamefully admit they cried in the end. This film was director James Cameron's greatest cinematic success, a larger-than-life, epic thriller romance brought to life by a strong cast and an overall expensive production. It came as no surprise that this beloved film swept the Oscars, earning the movie 11 Oscars including Best Picture. This one film made actor Leonardo DiCaprio a bankable star. James Cameron spent several years investing on this great project, recreating a model of the Titanic which he then sunk, hired costume designer Debora Lynn Scott, an expert on period fashion for 1912, haunting music by James Horner, production design by Peter Lamont, art direction by Martin Laing and cinematographer Russell Carpenter whose rich color and panoramic scenes establish an intense realism, especially in the latter portions. The hype surrounding the film ? Not only Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet's chemistry as the lovers, but the powerfully emotional and human drama of surviving the most famous shipwreck in history. The film opens in the present day, where ambitious entrepreneur Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) unearths relics from the sunken Titanic, among them a sketching of a beautiful woman wearing a priceless diamond pendant, which is what he is really after. It belongs to Titanic survivor Rose Dewitt Bucater (played by "Old Hollywood" star Gloria Stuart) who is 100 something years old. She tells her story and we return to 1912, following the life of the characters on board that doomed voyage. Rose at age 17 (Kate Winslet) is a rich American girl on her way to Philadelphia to get married to millionaire Caledon Hockley (Billy Zane) whom she met at her university and has not truly fallen for. She is reluctant to marry or to take part of a stuffy lifestyle she finds meaningless, not because she wouldn't mind being wealthy but because it would mean being denied her personal freedom. These were sexist times and the movie clearly suggests this. Hockley may love Rose but he is not presented in a sympathetic light and is generally ruthless, arrogant and domineering. Rose's mother is a self-absorbed social climber who is pressuring her own daughter into a marriage of convenience without a thought to her daughter's personal happiness. When the desperately depressed Rose attempts suicide, American Jack Dawson (Dicaprio) saves her. The two strike up a romance, breaking social class barriers and provoking the wrath of Caledon Hockley. The last part of the film deals entirely with every single detail of the ship's demise from the minute it hits the iceberg to the minute it sinks, bottom's up, into the Atlantic waters. Impressive performances by minor characters such as Kathy Bates' Molly Brown, the only wealthy woman who was not a snob unlike the rest of the aristocratic brood, Jonathan Hyde's impetuous ship designer Bruce Ismay and Victor Garber's sensitive and resourceful Captain Andrews. This is a superb film and one that is sure to stir the soul every time you view it. Although it's quite long (longer than the standard 2 hour film), it is certain worth sitting through. Immerse yourself into the year 1912, journey across the Atlantic on that ill-fated maiden voyage and experience the passionate love of youth all over again. Perhaps the most rewarding aspects of the film is its verisimilitude. James Cameron knew enough about the Titanic to suffuse the film with such poignant realities as the elderly German-Jewish Strauss couple who refused to leave their bed and died in each other's arms, the Captain opting to go down with the ship, the orchestra playing on even while the ship sank, the issue of insufficient life boats and the irrepressible character of Molly Brown, who had won millions when her husband struck gold in Colorado, journeyed to Europe and returned home to America on the Titanic where she acted heroically by saving as many people as she possibly could. The real characters of John Jacob Astor, the richest man in America at the time, Guggenheim, and others. This film remains a wonderful and bittersweet tale of love and survival and a movie that represented the zenith of 90's cinema.