Directed by James Cameron, Titanic was the highest grossing movie ever until Avatar dethroned it only recently. This is a movie that everyone loves to hate now but I remember back in 1997 when everyone saw it in theater, sometime multiple times, it was a goddamn smashing success. I eventually went to see it weeks after the open (I was not a movie buff back then lol) and as an impressionable kid, I was pretty blown away too.

The movie starts in a modern day setting as researchers are exploring the wreck of the Titanic for long lost treasures. All they find, after discovering a safe, is a hand-drawn picture of a nude woman with a massive diamond necklace around her neck. They are stunned when that same woman, now 101 years old, calls them, wishing to get on board of their ship. The flashback begins as she tells the story of what happened on those fateful days leading up to the tragedy. Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) is a young upper-class woman. Although she and her mother appear wealthy, they are burdened by debt and she is being forced to marry “Cal” Hockey (Billy Zane), the arrogant and controlling son of a steel tycoon, to erase her family’s debt. Depressed and distraught, she attempts to jump off the ship but a young man prevents her from doing so. The man is Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a free-spirited artist without a penny. The two soon become friends and then lovers… There you have it, a star-crossed love story that “transcends” social and economic classes and is set within the backdrop of the sinking of the Titanic.

Titanic was at the time the most expensive movie ever made with a budget of $200 million. The best aspect of the movie is all the details that went with recreating the ship and its sinking on screen. From the costumes to the furniture and silverware, Cameron really succeeded in immersing the viewer and making him/her part of the movie. The movie is visually spectacular from beginning to end. The disaster part of the movie is simply fantastic and you really live the tragedy through each of the characters. What would one do in such a large scale catastrophe? Cameron does a great job of keeping most of the focus on the two main characters. We never stop caring for them even in the midst of the disaster.

Unfortunately, this movie was extremely ambitious and not everything worked out as well as others. Structurally, the entire modern day subplot should simply have been edited out, easily saving 30 minutes of screen time. Thinking back, it brought absolutely nothing to the movie and for a movie to be well over 3 hours, every single scene must be in the movie for a really good reason. Additionally, it removed the suspense of knowing whether Rose would survive the disaster.

The script written by Cameron himself, albeit effective, is just overly simplistic, unoriginal and full of cliches. Every characters that comes on screen are stereotypical caricatures. The wealthy are all greedy and haughty, despising the poor and being selfish because of their social status. The poor are all essentially good-natured, noble and compassionate. Basically, everything is black and white with no shades of gray, dumbed down and manipulated so the viewer has absolutely nothing to reflect about.

The love story between Jack and Rose is a merely average romance. The two actors have very good chemistry together and we don’t have to wonder why Rose would fall in love with Jack. However, some of the dialogues they have felt extremely contrived and flat. The two characters simply don’t seem to have much to talk about (a scene about learning to spit???) and all the blame goes directly to Cameron’s lazy writing. It also doesn’t help that Cal, played by Billy Zane is a completely one-dimensional archetype: he is the most arrogant, snobbish and evil fiance on Earth and there is absolutely no redeeming quality about him. Imagine if Cal was actually a decent guy who might have taken Rose for granted but then realizes he is losing her, and corrects himself. As far as romantic tension goes, even though we all know who Rose is ultimately going to choose, it would have made the movie so much more enthralling not being sure what she was going to do. Those are the two main aspects about the romance that hamper the movie most.

But then, why did this movie rack up so much money? Why all the love?  Why eleven Academy Awards? Titanic is by no means a bad movie. Despite all its limitations, the movie does everything it needs to do effectively. An unoriginal but solid emotional core, two charismatic leads, universal themes, stunningly beautiful visuals, a great soundtrack, and a massive disaster that has fascinated the world since 1912. Cameron is more a great manipulator than a great director. He understands exactly what the masses want to see in their movies and he simply delivers time and time again. Jack represents the little guy, freedom, passion, purity of spirit and everyone pulls for him to get Rose, who seem to be his perfect match. Cal represents everything that could be wrong with a man. Greedy, morally corrupted, overbearing, jealous, he obviously has no redeeming quality which makes him the clear cut antagonist. Rose chooses freedom over slavery, Jack sacrifices his life so his beloved one lives. The masses yearned for a movie like this and Cameron delivered it.

Production values are all first-rate as you would expect from a big budget movie. The CGI effects are still fairly satisfactory more than a decade after. The photography is grandiose and breathtaking, while the musical score by James Horner is haunting and still one of the most recognizable to this day.

A well-executed melodrama set in the grandiose backdrop of one of the greatest tragedy in history, Titanic is a timeless epic despite a relatively average and unoriginal central romance that feels flat and contrived.

B

Notes: Rated PG-13 for disaster related peril and violence, nudity, sensuality and brief language. 194 minutes