good retelling of great tragedy

Rating: 8/10 (2 August 2008)

James Cameron's Titanic holds up very well indeed after more than ten years since initial release. The minuses now are the same as then but they are minor in comparison to the plusses. First of all, the Titanic is one of the grandest tragedies of human history. The highest and mightiest could tumble. It was an analogy to the state of the world, almost like a foreshadowing of the First World War when all that seemed eternal disintegrated with spectacular suddenness.
Cameron approaches the task primarily as a hardware technician. The ship looks the way it has to look - grandiose, solid, lavishly appointed. The physical details are spot on, down to the last piece of china. This all helps. The use of CGI during the prolonged sinking is largely state of the art even now.
The idea of putting a story of young lovers at the center of the film is a sound, if trite, way to give us the universal through the particular. The film would have been just as gripping if Cameron had chosen a more Altmanesque approach whereby a whole group of characters would be given more or less equal weight as they made their way to journey's end. Here the focus is on the teenage couple: unhappy rich girl (Kate Winslet) and working-class bohemian artiste (Leonardo DiCaprio). The problem with these usually fine actors is that too often their youthful brio seems forced, as if Cameron as director/screenwriter is straining to point out their youth, their vitality, their exuberance, in contrast to Winslet's stuffy social set which disapproves of their alliance. The best acting comes from Billy Zane as the arrogant, sadistic, petulant fiancé of Winslet who stops at nothing to separate her from unwashed upstart DiCaprio. Zane gets it all right, including the clipped prep school accent which barely conceals his primal, frustrated rage at being trumped by someone from the lower classes. DiCaprio comes across as a modern suburban high school student playing a street urchin in a drama class presentation. There is no real edge to him. In fact, if the casting had been reversed it would have made much more sense. But DiCaprio's youth, looks and agility carry him through the spectacle. Besides, we don't go to spectacles for acting nuance.
Cameron's script isn't as dreadful as some claim, but it has significant shortcomings. (Screenwriting was the only major category in which Titanic was not nominated for an Oscar - and for good reason.) A bit of working over by a competent script doctor would have made it truer. Amazingly, considering Cameron himself has some background in visual arts, the situations and dialogue touching on questions of painting are embarrassingly unimaginative and superficial. And much of the banter between Winslet and DiCaprio sounds late 20th century, not 1912. The conflict between the haughty first-class passengers and those beneath them is perhaps overdone. Frances Fisher is touching as Winslet's socially striving mother for whom we feel both pity and contempt as she pushes her daughter into marriage with a soulless brute. Gloria Stuart as Kate Winslet grown old and Victor Garber as the ship's designer who sees his master creation ripped asunder also stand out. And some of the dinner table conversation in the first-class dining room is elegant and witty.
One implausibility: The water temperature of the sea in which the Titanic sank was just above freezing. No human, save an Olympic athlete, or at least the young and vigorous, could have survived more than a few minutes in waters of that temperature. Survivors relate that the screaming of the passengers who landed in the water when the ship sank subsided after only a few minutes. None could survive the water. Yet Kate Winslet is seen wading neck deep in this ice bath for minutes on end as she struggles to rescue DiCaprio who has been handcuffed to steam pipes in a lower-level cabin. Then the two proceed through endless corridors of freezing water to the deck where they continue on, fighting their way through panicked crowds, breaking down barriers, leaping and scaling heights, etc. until they finally go down with the ship into the freezing sea where they survive for endless minutes more as they as they cling to debris.
A CGI flaw: Just as false, occasionally Cameron's keyboard tappers and mouse movers add little puffs of computer-generated condensed breath to accompany the exhalations of actors in close up. Problem is, only intermittently does this condensation appear. One moment you see it, another moment it's gone.
The interminable lovey-dovey blatherings between Winslet and DiCaprio as they float in the ice water quickly wear thin. Perhaps pre-teen girls (a major component of this film's box office) would be transfixed by this interlude, but surely most adults would be yearning for DiCaprio's character to die and get it over with.
And even more dreadful than everything cited above is the treacly "Our Love Will Go On," a pop song belted by Celine Dion over the closing credits. I am sick and tired of contemporary pop songs being tacked on to historical dramas.
Finally, the ultimate film to see on this subject is "Titanic: The Legend Lives On" (1994), a fascinating and moving 4-hour-plus Arts & Entertainment Channel documentary about the Titanic from conception through construction through destruction, aftermath and cultural/historical legacy. More emotionally involving and fascinating than Cameron's movie. It will stay with you for a long time.