6 critical reasons why this was an excellent film

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2001)

Less mystifying than the success of this film is the negative response it received from most critics. It has been labelled a spectacle of death, adolescent, banal, and (most damning of all) Hollywood. (Hollywood's become an adjective now, apparently.) At least five of my friends would not see it because Leonardo diCaprio is a teen idol, and they feel above associating with that kind of thing. The dialogue is pitched at a very general level - the last thing you'd call it is poetic. I think part of what rubbed so many critics the wrong way, is that this is a completely new approach to the Victorian romance. (I know, 1912 isn't precisely Victorian, but it's close, and as the 'Edwardian romance' isn't really a genre, that's what people will be comparing this with.) Room With A View this ain't. It is, however, reminiscent in many respects with Thomas Hardy's novels. Here are some of it's features:

Technically, Titanic is really cutting edge. High quality special FX (though a few problems rendering the CGI passengers). It's good enough to double as a documentary. The characters are fictional, but really, is anyone dumb enough not to realise that? There's real footage of the real Titanic at the bottom of the ocean, really tricky stuff involving shooting underwater, and a strong knowledge and portrayal of the mechanical workings of the ship. It won the Special FX Oscar for good reason.

It's the first special FX romance. Sure there have been FX movies with romances in them, but only as an accompaniment to the testosterone pumping hero. Titanic makes the statement (perhaps inadvertently) that technology can be relevant to a woman's story as well. (More recently, we've seen Charlie's Angels, and I think we'll see more in the future - but Titanic was the first, as well as the only one that's really a 'chick-flick'). This doesn't necessarily make Titanic a good film, but it is a point of interest.

It's complex, yet logically consistent. When a plot works as smoothly as in Titanic, it's easy to overlook how clever it is. There are a lot of characters, but we never get confused. Every character is logically consistent. Every scene, every visual, every word moves the story forward. This film not only uses the classic 'Hero's Journey', it uses it for four subjects simultaneously: Rose (the heroine, played by Kate Winslet), the ship, the archaeologist, and the diamond. Each of these subjects has a story that stands alone. Rose and the ship are inextricably linked, and their stories parallel almost exactly. A lot of Rose's internal dialogue could be applied to the ship without changing a word, and their social roles are very similar. It's a clever technique that makes us relate to the ship's fate by identifying with Rose, and vice versa. Likewise, the archaeologist allows us to bridge the gap from our 20th century cynicism into Rose's story. The film doesn't expect us to care about this ship straight away, it works to persuade us, and the audience's 'journey' is mirrored in that of the archaeologist. (By the way, if you think this doesn't sound very hard, go ahead and try it, sucker.)

I mentioned Thomas Hardy earlier. James Cameron has Hardy's eye for real-world detail, and a way of realising its significance. More particularly, they both have a lot to say about women, the industrial revolution, British Imperialism, and class - and they seem to arrive at the same conclusions. The dialogue concentrates on being true-to-life rather than poetic - right down to accents, turn-of-phrase, and foreign words being subtitled (where necessary, which isn't often). This is also true of gestures, costumes, technology, music, art, and other cultural particularities. A great deal of thought and research has been expended. All this to give us a film that creates more than characters and a story, it's a film that recreates a world.

Awesome recognition of theme, metaphor, and myth. Personally, this is the aspect of Titanic that really blows me away. James Cameron not only recognised a good story here, but he figures out why it's important, and translates that onto the screen. The first, and most obvious point, is that the ship becomes a microcosm of British society. Graphically and spatially people are divided according to telling social conventions - cf first and third class accomodation. Cf the position and costumes of women and men. And because he's working from a true story, Cameron makes his point without being tokenistic. It embodies a Christian tri-partite world, with the hellish boiler chambers below, and the almost heavenly freedom on the decks above. The Captain and crew sit on high and order how everything will be run. The machinery (representing the industrial revolution) is awesome, remarkable, but ultimately fails when it becomes an end in and of itself. It is a classic tragedy that tells of human ambition, power, and pride. It is a Romeo & Juliet tale of the love that crosses all boundaries. It incorporates Icarus and metaphorical fairy godmothers. It's the ship of fools, the journey from the Old World to the New, and Man against Nature (and the gendered nature of the concept is explored). But it does all this with a particularity of circumstance that takes these themes/myths/ideas, and reinvents them. Then it turns up the pressure - first by bottling these people onto a large (but still conspicuously finite ship); then, as the ship sinks, taking that room and making it smaller and smaller. People are forced to make choices. Push comes to shove. And the good, the bad, and very ugly side of human nature is disturbingly brought to life.

Finally, Titanic has an emphasis on communication. It takes a vast amount of complex information and communicates it clearly and succinctly. It is the kind of layered film that anyone can watch and understand, but the more you look into it, the more you find. It's very visual - in such a way that you could turn the sound down and you'd get all the important details. It shows, it doesn't tell. Despite the technical wizardry producing it required, and the huge numbers of people to co-ordinate, the film looks unified and never falters in its pacing, themes, or story. It remains masterfully under the director's control, and it lives and breathes his enthusiasm.