Titanic
101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.
- Released: 1997-11-18
- Runtime: 194 minutes
- Genre: Drama, Romance
- Stars: Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Gloria Stuart, Bill Paxton, Bernard Hill, Victor Garber, Lewis Abernathy, Suzy Amis, Nicholas Cascone, Danny Nucci, Jason Barry, Lew Palter, Eric Braeden, Bernard Fox, Ioan Gruffudd, Jonny Phillips, Martin East, Gregory Cooke
- Director: James Cameron
Comments
- fernandoschiavi - 30 December 2022
A great epic created by the determination and perfectionism of a director, which shows an almost impossible romance and instigates reflections, analysis and lots of emotions
Over its three-hour runtime, Titanic represents a gigantic cinematic achievement. And while the first half takes on the responsibility of establishing the presence of all the faces that we will follow, their relationships and the tragedy that is announced, the second part is responsible for the definitive test of how much we have been involved up to that point and how far Cameron's heavy hand with his team was justified. The whole act of the ship succumbing after colliding with an iceberg takes about an hour or so of projection, and with all this time in hand, Cameron elaborates his opera of despair, tears and the true portrait of the dimension of the facts, of solidarity vs. Need for survival, greed vs man's unpreparedness and overconfidence. "Not even God could sink that ship", says someone at one point, and Cameron is keen to keep this line of dialogue as an uncomfortable irony about the representation of power that the Titanic gave to those responsible and how their fate symbolized their downfall. And how several lives had to pay together for it. Cameron does not make this explicit in dialogues, but through situations while the ship sinks that make it impossible for the public to remain impassive in the face of the fact that, yes, the fate of the RMS Titanic could have been different.
Much of Cameron's own passion (slightly escaping from the term "obsession"), of course, was materialized in a palpable way on the screen, especially in the initial shock with all the perfectionism in the smallest details about the realistic reconstruction of the ship, something that gave Cameron a long time of research, whether on the architecture of the ship, on the division of classes and on legendary figures from that event who mark their presence or not in Cameron's vision. Titanic already proves to be a courageous positioning film when its script takes place within this novel that embraces the corny and the improbable and makes the shipwreck its backdrop to link these two lines. The ship is almost a silent and threatening character that is there to test the limits of the overwhelming feelings between Jack and Rose.
And Cameron, skillfully, makes this unlikely romantic portrayal his main force to make us laugh, cry, move and cheer for an undetectable three hours of projection. Jack and Rose formed their relationship during the 4 days the ship was in the Atlantic, but we treated the couple as if they had known each other for a long time. The director's patience and richness is commendable for establishing the mutual interest between the characters, working on dialogues and looks that exemplify, little by little, what Jack and Rose feel. There is the first exchange of looks, the initial barbs between the couple, and then the exchange of smiles and furtive encounters that denote the emergence and growth of that passion. And not only that, there's also the presence of Rose's villainous fiancé, Cal (Billy Zane) and his mother Ruth (Frances Fisher), both petty, aristocratic and pompous fellows who will be immediately against Rose's approach to the third-grade boy. Manichaeism, in theory, is formed, but as Titanic deconstructs itself, what seems "black and white" on paper becomes a palpable mosaic of good guys and bad guys that, when we realize it, we are already involved.
But Cameron also has a notable respect for the historical fact itself and all its tragic representation, walking with his camera in a take that reveals all the majesty of the ship and, inside, the prevalence of a hierarchy between the richest and the poorest. . The different treatment between the classes is perfectly represented from the ascent to the ship until its entire sinking, where we see that even in the imminent tragedy, the hierarchy remains about who should live and die. Cameron is punctual without being didactic, and thereby enriches the historical balance that is Titanic. The sequences in which the camera "flies" over the replica of the Titanic made at Cameron's request, showing its full size are breathtaking. The art direction and scenography are exquisite, as well as the photography. The sound (especially if you're in a cinema that has digital sound) is an independent part of the story, alternating deafening moments with others of absolute calm. In this regard, I must particularly emphasize the moment of the collision with the iceberg and the sequence in the engine room.
And even in the destruction of the ship before our eyes, it is not there that we find certainty for Cameron's placements behind the cameras, but we only attest to how much this is a refined filmmaker, who reached his apex here about what to know exactly what to do, how to do it and what it would take to get to that result. Cameron had already proven to be a skilled manipulator of special and digital effects with both The Terminator or even his Aliens, the Rescue, and even after Titanic, cinema evolves a lot in possibilities, probabilities and technological advancement. But remember that 20 years have just passed, and even in a thorough analysis, it is quite difficult (daring to say, impossible) to find a visual spectacle like the one provided by Titanic. The magnitude of everything is indescribable, whether for the destruction of the sets while the icy waters of the Atlantic destroy the rooms and deform the ship, the shots with an uncountable number of extras running and fighting for their lives, the legendary and remarkable moments like the couple of elderly people embracing in bed, or the orchestra of violinists, or the long-awaited scene where the ship breaks in half. Everything is eye-popping and impressing the senses. A complex tragedy relived almost in real time.
And by wrapping his story of love and tragedy within this classic Shakespearean aura, there was no way Cameron could dispense with names in his cast that would bring the breath and embrace necessary for his characters to be pulsating enough to hook audiences, or else all the clichés. Together would shoot themselves in the foot and would sacrifice involvement. And when we look back, we wonder if either Cameron really was lucky, or even to assemble his cast the director had vision. Kate Winslet was already on the back of a notable Oscar nomination for Sense and Sensibility, and in the role of the determined Rose she proved to the world what an actress of rich nuances she was, nuances that can be noted with pleasure in Rose's internal conflicts that Winslet exemplifies through expressions that vary between fear, despair (she is being forced by her mother to remain engaged to Cal) and the certainty of what her heart wants. In her counterpoint, the now deceased Gloria Stuart embodies Rose with more than 100 years of life, and in the measly minutes in which she appears to narrate her story on the ship, she conveys a truth in her face about the facts as if she had really gone through everything. That (and regrettably, the actress lost her Oscar that year to Kim Basinger in Los Angele: Confidential).
DiCaprio, instantly cemented as a youthful symbol (the actor was a measly 23 years old at the time) for his portrayal of Jack Dawson, takes the position of that youthful, penniless but hopeful, passionate and sensitive soul, the perfect recipe for May your face conquer hearts. Billy Zane, who could have received more attention at that year's awards, perfectly balances Cal's villainy, who, deep down, is just another man who doesn't want to be passed over by the female figure he was promised. Kathy Bates captivates as the legendary Molly Brown (despite the character not receiving a worthy outcome for herself, something confessed by the actress herself years later), Frances Fisher stamps on her face the desperation of losing all her money if Rose does not firm her commitment to Cal, and among all the other names, Bill Paxton and Victor Garber are moving with their personal conflicts directly involving the ship.
Along with the film's explosion in theaters, Celine Dion's theme song for the film, My Heart Will Go On, flooded radio for an impressive period, breaking records and accumulating for itself several parodies and references in other outlets over the years. The composer James Horner himself, now deceased, takes advantage of his nuances, chords and evocations to compose the striking soundtrack responsible for so many tears. And detail: Cameron was not in favor of any song within the film, so Horner composed the song in secret along with Will Jennings so that Celine could record it. Cameron only agreed to use it after listening to the song several times and coming to the conclusion that a potentially successful song could calm the spirits of studio executives. The success proves to us that the beautiful song is indispensable to Titanic's popularity.
"Titanic" is almost an opera. It is a testimony against greed, against unpreparedness and the lack of solidarity among men. It is also the record of one of humanity's greatest accidents, something so memorable that it should never be repeated. The genius of James Cameron, the maestro of this magnitude, was to be able to handle all possible clichés and make them work in his favor. The characters, for example, are completely Manichaean, with no middle ground. The sea is always calm, the sky is constantly blue. Everything is beautiful, beautiful, dazzling. And yet dangerous, frightening, deadly. We get so wrapped up in the scale of facts and facts that we ignore every slip up. And even the end, sugary to the extreme, sends us to the inevitable cry. Impossible to remain impassive, however unlikely it may be.
"Titanic" is a great epic, made possible by the determination and perfectionism of a director, which portrays an almost impossible romance and instigates reflections and analyzes as exciting as the emotion caused by the film.
