A grotesque embarrassment of ill-ordered riches.

Rating: 3/10 (11 June 2003)

An appalling, galling 'spectacle' and slapdash mix of effects, melodrama and romance. "Titanic" is utterly misguided; shamefully populist and hoist by its own focus group petard. This is not showmanship of the grandiose and warm kind of a Selznick; it is the cold, mechanical assemblage feat of a bragging Cameron. It is far from unique; and much in the usual Hollywood action vein, with undramatic noisiness, prosaic lighting, and faceless acting.
Even 'Our Kate' can't save it... the busty Miss Winslet puts a bit more presence into things initially, but she can't truly work within the confines of such a dire nonentity of a script; her Rose just becomes irritating and strained in effect as the film wears painfully on. Di Caprio is awful; a rubbery, glib little presence who increases the quotient of dull artifice - that this film is already unduly well stocked with. Indeed, this film may as well not have included any actors, as Cameron seems so entirely disinterested in them; for all the pretence of this being a 'human story', there is precious little humanity in this film. An out-of-place love story 'suffices'; actors like Bernard Hill are left adrift, with little to convey - even in a film stretching past three hours. A problem is that the effects are flashy and thoroughly incongruous to any image of the historical event. Crucially there is no dignity to this film; where it should have used Gavin Bryars' poignant, cavernous, driftwood-epic soundscape, "The Sinking of the Titanic" for its score, instead we have James Horner's parodic, cliched John Williams-esque bluster and blandness, telegraphing every 'emotion' and example of pyrotechnics. It's an awful score, instilling a very familiar, action movie-moronic ethos; this sense of the events being sold short comes across equally in Di Caprio's pipsqueak playing and Winslet's rather ungainly starry turn.
How much better would the historical events have been served by Bryars' music, dignified, still and unusual camera placements, and a depersonalized sad grandeur? A semi-documentary, in grainy, mournful black and white would far better suit this subject; think "Wisconsin Death Trip" and you'll be understand in part how I envisage it. I want to shut this awful James Cameron white elephant out of my mind, and let a more graceful film play there.
Rating:- */*****