A Movie I Hate to Love

Rating: 10/10 (8 April 2012)

I've never been into long movies. When a film starts growing longer than an hour thirty, perhaps an hour forty-five, I can't help but yawn and perhaps snooze off. It happened to me with the greatest movies in the history of cinema: I fell asleep with Gone With the Wind and yawned plenty of times with Schindler's List.
But with Titanic, however, hours seemed to dash by without me noticing. I watched the story on screen, with my 3D glasses on, and I was instantly captured by Jack and Rose's story. Three hours twenty, nonetheless. And in all that time, I didn't let out a single yawn. Neither did I look at the time on my phone. I felt how the magic of Titanic really got to me, and when the credits came in my face was flooded with tears.
Perhaps what I like the most about this movie is how it has made me feel. Yeah, it has made me feel things I had never felt before. For instance, I had never cried with a movie. And it wasn't just the sad romantic story that involved the two characters - but how all the characters that had interacted with them died one by one, sunk with the Ship of Dreams. Mr. Andrews, Captain Smith, little Cora, Mr. Murdoch, Tommy, Fabrizio...because Titanic isn't just a romantic movie, it's also a historic movie that shows what happened on a fatal April 14 morning, in 1912. One thousand fifty souls sunk down along with the Titanic into the deep waters of the Northern Atlantic, and I could see all that pain and suffering portrayed in James Cameron's movie perfectly. And it was during that dramatic hour, sitting still at the movie theater, in which tears dared to slide down my cheeks, along with most of the other viewers.
As the movie credits slid by in the theater screen, my brother asked me if I was crying, and I shook my head. "It's just the 3D glasses. You know, they get my eyes teary."
Yes, it might have very well been the 3D glasses. Or perhaps the fact that I had watched a great modern classic that will not be easily forgotten.