Dare to embrace.

Rating: Null/10 (31 August 2003)

What moves us varies greatly from person to person. Some are moved to tears by this film while others are left sleepy and bored. As with any love story, whether it be Casablanca, Sleepless in Seattle or Gone With the Wind, people tend to end up in the same two camps; those who embrace and those who abstain.
We all have our own criteria that have to be met for us to immerse ourselves in any given movie. Those criteria are in turn influenced by our preconceptions and the genre in general. With regard to movies, immersion is determined by how much reality we are willing to temporarily set aside or how much of the illusion we buy if you will.
A movie is after all merely a "sequence of photographs projected onto a screen with sufficient rapidity as to create the illusion of motion and continuity." So even documentaries require us to suspend some part of reality to attain immersion. Once this basic requirement is met, our own criteria determine what level of cinematography, directing, scripting, acting and so on, are required for us to be immersed. The genre plays an important role too, as these criteria differ widely from genre to genre. One might not put so much emphasis on acting in an action movie driven by special effects as one would in a drama, or one might not be offended by the impossibility of a certain action sequence as one would be of inaccurate facts in a documentary.
Titanic can be summed up as an unbelievable love story set in a believable environment. It has some minor flaws, but there is no denying the scope of the film. What we are left with is the storyline, and this is where opinions differ.
Whether you are moved to tears or bored to sleep depends on your ability to immerse yourself in this type of film. The genre is an old one, and we are reluctant to give in to the blatantly obvious plot that we know certainly must end in tragedy. Some are unwilling or unable to descend from their lofty seat of "objective" observation to the wooden planks of the sinking ship because they see through the directors' transparent and unoriginal ploys to make them cry like babies. Having fought off his feeble attempts to trick them into feeling, they devote their attention to the scenery and technicalities, finding obvious errors that they can't believe other people missed.
In my opinion, emotions are a very important aspect of humanity and to bottle them up without reason is a shame and a restriction of experience. One can easily avoid caring about most things, but it takes guts to allow your self to embrace the true horrors of what transpired on that maiden voyage. If you dare to view history as more than facts and statistics, if you have the guts to embrace a fictional and fantastic storyline, you will love this movie. If you aren't prepared to do that, this movie will most probably be a complete waste of your time.