Massive in scale but little in actual substance

Rating: 5/10 (13 July 2018)

It is quite easy to be swept away by Titanic's outstanding cinematography or exceptional musical score, and as a result a lot of its obvious flaws and faults seem to be overlooked. As an objective viewer however it is quite obviously an unfortunate disappointment.
As stated before the cinematography in Titanic is fantastic, with a lot of widescreen shots of the ship from high angles. A couple of scenes such as the attempted Rose suicide near its start or when the final part of the ship goes down do look pretty bad and fake though, but for most of the film it looks pretty beautiful. The indoor set design is also amazing, and it basically breathes 1912 to look at its elegant and artistic design. The musical score by James Horner is also ( as to be expected from him ) a beautiful emotional piece that seems to fit extremely well in Titanic. However, while it is a very stylish film this way, it doesn't manage to be impressive on the actual substantial aspects of cinema, such as its acting or its screenplay, which are both very inconsistent to say the least. Billy Zane, Kathy Bates & Bernard Hill are some examples of actors/actress who do show a impressive performance, but Kate Winslet as young Rose has this monotone emotionless look on her face all the time, and i find it hard to see what Jack ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) sees in her because of this. Winslet is not capable of acquiring the emotional intensity that is required for a role such as this, since her acting is so theatrical and not very natural. While DiCaprio is a fantastic actor, he seems to be struggling in every scene in Titanic, primarily because he is simply miscast. He is not the type of actor for a supposed heart tugging romance, and he is thus unable to truly capture the essence of their bond. ( For an actually GOOD young DiCaprio role, watch the Basketball Diaries (1995) )
Unfortunately James Cameron not only wanted to direct, but also write a film as grand in scale as this one. This results in a pretty mediocre screenplay and dialogue that a kid could have come up with. Titanic offers little sub text, symbolism or depth since its writing is sub par to say the least. There are a lot of corny moments and cliché dialogue ( The entire scene of Rose discovering Jack's talent for drawings for example ) and all the while it has very little subtlety and it is unable to tell the audience something without blatantly having some character saying it, which in itself is ofcourse an insult to the audience's intelligence, and it results in Titanic being quite a poorly written movie that is not intelligent and most of the time just plain dumb.
The first part of the film seems more like a social commentary instead of a film, as Cameron tries his best to show the audience what a bunch of snobbish unlikeable & arrogant folk the rich people are, and how outgoing and free the poor people seem to be. This might not have been so bad, if Cameron actually managed to be subtle in this matter, but this was not the case, as for example Billy Zane's character Cal is such an unsubtle way of telling the audience that the rich are bad. Ofcourse no offense to Billy Zane, who was great as his character, but his entire character is utterly ridiculous and he is unable to perform a single likeable action throughout the entire film, and this never changes. We get it Cameron, the rich guy is the bad guy, no need to shove it down our throats. Cameron's greatest mistake seems to be the decision to write the movie himself instead of bringing in an experienced screenplay writer.
The second half of the film is more of a disaster movie, and it isn't so different from your average modern day monster blockbuster, except the monster in this film is the water. Even if there were any hidden meaning behind the first half of Titanic, the second half contains no depth whatsoever, and shows us the demise of a lot of characters nobody knows and nobody cares about. In the end we don't really care that much about Rose and Jack either, since their acting was not up to the challenge and the dialogue provided by Cameron was not fantastic either. It also shows us multiple instances of weird moments of self sacrifice, with people sacrificing themselves for no obvious reason instead of trying to escape. While this might be realistic in a film about the Japanese bushido code, in Titanic it feels out of character and it just doesn't fit, since these are all normal people who should want to simply get on with their lives.
Cameron might show some images to impress the audience with his take on this real life tragedy, ( The opening scene with the old footage of Titanic actually setting off with Horner's score is ofcourse fantastic ) but in substance Titanic is severely flawed and the experience of watching it is therefore less immersive which in turn makes it lack the emotional impact it should have had.