With Titanic, writer/editor/producer/director James Cameron has hit his peak; nothing he can come up with next will be able to match the adrenaline rush and emotional wallop one receives after seeing this masterpiece.
Cameron has always been that rare filmmaker, one who can make a big-budget special effects feast with an emotional core, and he doesn't disappoint here. While it definately is a visual spectacle in the last half, the entire film is dominated by the rivetting romance between the two central characters, Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater. Titanic is definately a film that has something for almost everyone.
Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton), while on an expedition through the wreckage of the eponymous ocean liner, discovers a drawing of a young woman wearing what he has been searching three years for, an extremely rare and fabled diamond, the Heart of the Ocean. Upon seeing Lovett on a news report one day, Rose Calvert (Gloria Stuart) contacts Lovett, telling him that she is the woman in the picture. He has her flown to his ship, where she tells her version of what happened on the fateful night of April 14, 1912.
The younger Rose (Kate Winslet) is travelling across the Atlantic back to America with her mother (Frances Fisher) and fiance Cal (Billy Zane) to an impending marriage she'd rather do without. Feeling trapped in her lifestyle among the high society and unable to see an escape route from a loveless marriage with Cal, she tries to leap to an icy death from the back of the ship when she is rescued by Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a poor drifter who won his third-class ticket in a lucky hand of poker. They strike up a friendship and soon discover that they are both lost souls who belong to each other. Fate has other plans, however.
Titanic is as close to being a perfect Hollywood film there has been in fifty years. Visually, the film is stunning; the production design is among the most authentic I have ever seen. It may seem cliched, but it is easy to believe that Cameron & Co. really filmed on the decks of the ship. The special effects, while iffy in places, are nonetheless amazing. There is no doubt that the $US200 million budget was money well spent.
The film would be nothing, however, if it didn't have a story one could care about, and in this department Cameron does not disappoint. DiCaprio and Winslet are perfect in their roles, generating an onscreen chemistry that brings the film a heart and soul unseen in recent Hollywood films. Both actors are terrific; DiCaprio brings youthful charm early on, but in the later scenes dominates with the determination and maturity required.
Winslet, however, is extraordinary. Whether casually flirting with DiCaprio, standing up to her mother or floating helplessly in the middle of the Atlantic, she is absolutely rivetting. Another Oscar nomination (her first being for Sense & Sensibility) will not be a surprise in the least. She could very well become my favourite actress in the near future.
Gloria Stuart, as the older Rose, is fine in her return to film. I was completely unfamiliar with her before the release of Titanic, but now I am very tempted to check out some of her earlier work. Even though she is very subdued and without any phony theatrics, she keeps you glued to the screen whenever she appears. An Oscar nomination is only a formality.
Most people know about Titanic because of it's budget and, realistically, Paramount and Fox may never see all of their money back. It's a testament to both studios, however, that they were willing to put so much money into such an emotionally involving film. Titanic is the best film of the year, despite its minor flaws, and I doubt I'll see a better example of how to make a great movie for a long, long time.
--- Nigel Bridgeman (nigelb@powerup.com.au) The Movie Pages - a movie page: http://www.powerup.com.au/~nigelb/movies
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