Skip to main content

Titanic (1997) - A Tale of Two Movies, One Painful and One Great

 



The first time I saw Titanic I was just a little kid, and I bawled my eyes out and then once I dried up I begged to see it again so we sat through that extremely long movie twice in two days. Our VHS copy was well worn by the time we upgraded to DVD, we watched it regularly as a family in the late 90s and early 00s. It is probably a quite vital piece of media when it comes to my love and respect and awe of grandiose filmmaking even though these days I maybe only watch it every 5 years or so. So since my parents got Paramount+ through their cable and it was the only film on there that spoke to me when I was first glancing through their library, I figured why not see how it holds up?

Honestly, every time I do revisit the film I spend like the first two hours being painfully reminded why it is so rare that I do. I grew up with a mom and older sister, a very female oriented household, so trust me when I say I’ve heard my fair share of really painfully written and delivered romantic dialogue but few outside of like Hallmark movies is as awkward, clumsy and often just downright embarrassing as between Jack and Rose here and what a young Ben thought was a grand romance for the ages is about as shallow a fling as you can get. Somebody on social media pointed out when I commented on this fact that of its many Oscar nominations, not one of them was for screenplay, and yeah that makes a lot of sense. However, it isn’t just the romantic dialogue and “character development” that makes this admitted asexual crank cringe, but every single supporting character is completely one dimensional, especially most of the monied classes in the film. They have one defining personalty mode and they stick to it until the end, nuance is not to be found anywhere except maybe the less-thankless role played by Kathy Bates. Of course they also insert a lot of groanworthy jokes about pop culture like one about the future worth of a Picasso that I literally “booed” my TV after.

So much of the little bit of enjoyment I have of the first couple hours of the movie just comes from design. The ship sets and “miniatures” are impressively detailed, the costumes and dining rooms and every little area we see are dazzling and really put you into a sense of wonderment of what the ship must have been like. The film also has a good cast even if they aren’t given much to work with, and pure charisma can sometimes carry them through the clunkiness and it is easy to see why the two leads went on to long, interesting careers where they got quite a number of really good roles.

Once they hit the iceberg though, everything goes into overdrive for the better. While I’m the first to call him overrated generally, nobody would argue that James Cameron doesn’t know how to direct a damn good horror-tinged action film, and that’s exactly what it becomes. A disaster film full kinetic, innovative, and just wild filmmaking, extremely eerie lighting and scenarios and framing, and creeping claustrophobia and of course a crushing impending doom for so many. I cannot express to you how pitch perfectly directed with absolutely brilliant mixed practical and early CGI effects utilized to make you feel every creak and glub and even the frostiness of the night that this film is after around the 2 hour mark. If they had reduced the film by about an hour mostly from the first half of the film, I would have a largely positive view of it because the second half does such an effective job of filling you with the terrors and hopelessness of the situation. Alas…

Will it be another 5 years for me? Yeah, probably, or maybe the next time I’m in the mood I will simply skip forward until where the good stuff really gets going cause it isn’t like any of the stuff I’d be missing makes me care about these puddle shallow characters any more, I might even like them more without it. However, will I probably always continue coming back not out of nostalgia but purely the strength of its climax? That is quite likely, and I will always recommend it more than I don’t on that basis.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ivan the Terrible, Part 1 (1944) - Uncomfortably Stalinist, Visually Astounding

  I know that I usually start reviews with a personal anecdote of some sort, but this one is kind of a head scratcher. My only real ties in my life to the Soviet Union are just a lifelong, morbid fascination with the Cold War era and rocking a hammer and sickle pin on my backpack as middle schooler into punk rock. However, I do like a lot of Soviet era cartoons which are a special kind of surreal and I really like some film movements of Soviet states on the fringe, and what Soviet films I’ve seen often have very strong and striking visuals. So when I saw that Ivan the Terrible Parts 1 and 2 were on Max, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to do something different for this blog even if it might be a bit shorter than my typical review. Obviously, the biggest and most valid criticism of the film is how deeply unsubtle it is in most ways, but particularly when it comes to defending and propagating the ideals of Stalinism. As a member of the left, I’m well aware there are factions t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Scream (1996) - Williamson Dialogue Hasn't Always Aged Well, Though Iconic All the Same

  My mom grew up among the slasher golden era of the 80s, so she adored the genre and many of the 2000+ VHS tapes she had around for a lot of my childhood were various slasher franchises and what we didn’t have by 7 or 8 I was begging my parents to rent for me from Hollywood Video or Movie Starz on a regular basis. So it goes without saying that Scream coming in and revitalizing the entire genre’s popularity for a handful of years was a big deal in our household and I was probably very young the first time I saw it which was likely not long after it came out on tape in probably ‘97, same with the sequels in later years. I then proceeded to watch it so many times across my childhood well into adulthood that practically every line and scene and even delivery are memorized at that point, which made stepping back to write as objective a review as I can somewhat difficult but I found the more of a critical eye I applied to it the more it worked out. As always starting with the negat...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) - Funny, Fun, and a Little Bit Insufferable

  The late 00s and early 10s were a pretty good time to be somebody who loved cult horror films with a sense of humor. You had the likes of Trick r Treat, Drag Me to Hell, and my favorite at the time which was The Cabin in the Woods. Whether it was on pay cable or early streaming, the film became a regular fixture in the years I mostly just spent my time frequently re-watching the same movies and drinking far too much beer. Because of that, I’ve gone some years without watching it very frequently cause I got kind of burnt out on it in my 20s but I had this former Blockbuster rental Bluray copy that cost less than 2 bucks so I figured why not see how well the film holds up? The thing that hasn’t held up so well is how smugly in love with its own dialog and cleverness the film is in a way that immediately signals that Joss Whedon was a writer on it. There’s a certain too cute quality to a lot of Whedon’s projects that have made me not like them as much as other people do, sorry to ...
Post a Comment
Read more