A sterile example of post-modernism......

Rating: 1/10 (15 January 2005)

Well, this certainly put bums on seats. Great special effects, great cinematography, nudity, steamy sex scene, spitting competitions, shoot-outs, and a tragic ending to a beautiful love story - all aboard the S.S Titanic! This makes for, I'd say, the worse of the well-known Titanic movies. It had a much bigger budget and such better special effects, but for extreme lack of sincerity and authenticity it is by far the worse. The producers actually seemed to make an effort - in some parts at least - to include 1990s attitudes into a 1912 setting: note the rude finger Kate Winslet gave to the antagonist while escaping down the lift.
Kudos to James Cameron for putting so much effort into building the actual ship from original blueprints and for focusing so much attention on realistic FX, and making the film, in parts, so profoundly historically accurate. But in those parts in which the film was not profoundly accurate, it was profoundly the opposite and disgustingly so. Shame on Cameron for making the focus of the film a soppy, clichéd love story; the kind of which we have seen dozens of times. And shame for making those scenes which were historically and poignantly accurate mere backdrops to this standard and fictionalised love story.
But in our times, this kind of lowest-common-denominator love story puts bums on seats and millions forked out to see Winslet and DiCaprio fall in love, ride on the bow, and finally say a tearful, inopportune, goodbye.
This is the failure of the movie. It is anachronistic, and the film voids itself off. On one hand, spending millions on accuracy - sets, research, costumes and special effects - will attract many people looking forward to good quality film-making and a solid telling of what happened that night - people who will then be alienated by the no-brainer love story. On the other hand, the assumed target audience of the film who are primarily excited by the love story are those who could not care less about the millions spent on historical accuracy. It is a totally anachronistic situation.
James Cameron totally wasted a fantastic opportunity to make a brilliant film on the subject, a film that could have surpassed all previous efforts. Instead he devised a storyline totally entrenched in Hollywood love-story stereotype, of the type that anyone could see anywhere else, and simply set this aboard a historically accurate rendition of the Titanic. He did not understand that the real events alone of April 14-15 1912 were enough to fuel a heart-breaking story of tragedy and bitter irony, and instead he used well-worn cinematic tools to pitch the film at the lowest-common-denominator who can't be bothered thinking outside their own experience. 'Titanic' is just an example of the cultural sterility of our times. The 1958 film 'A Night to Remember' told a more genuine, authentic, touching and historically accurate version of the disaster with half the budget and half the special effects technology, and I think this is testament to the suburban teenage wasteland which is Cameron's film.
Still, the film offers good old-fashioned movie-going thrills and spills. It has a classic format against-the-odds love story all. It also has great special effects, and employs intelligent cinematography. So as a form of entertainment, it is a jolly good romp to accompany a bag of popcorn. As a film about the Titanic - which it purports to be - well, this kind of story could have been set anywhere and at anytime. The Titanic merely made a good and exciting setting for the fictional characters involved.
This is a bad Titanic film, and as James Cameron was aspiring to make a Titanic film, hence the title, he has failed. As time, the harshest critic of all, marches on the film will be seen more and more as a marketing vehicle of the late 1990s. Other, better, Titanic productions will remain holding their own as honest, accurate and sincere renditions of what really happened that night.
Finally, the above-mentioned remarks about the anachronistic nature of the film make it difficult to rate, and hence the love-it-or-hate-it experience of this film. 'Titanic' straddles the ridge between well researched triumph and Hollywood farce with the dexterity of a three-legged elephant....Which ever direction the elephant falls is up to each individual viewer.