TITANIC
A Film Review by Brian Takeshita
Rating: *** out of ****
I was pleasantly surprised by this film. With a budget topping $200 million, I was quite skeptical about whether throwing all that money toward one of the twentieth century's greatest tragedies would make a film exciting enough to see. How much could you dress up the sets? How many models and computer effects could you use? How much more action could you pack into a ship that sinks? Oh, if I've just given away part of the plot for you, go back to school. After having viewed TITANIC, however, I found it to be a well-paced, well-designed, and overall well-made movie. There have been many films made about the maiden and final voyage of the ocean liner Titanic, but this latest offering from director James Cameron is the best I've seen.
TITANIC tells its story in two time periods. It starts out in the present, when ocean explorer Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) and his team are exploring the wreckage of the Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic, searching for a priceless diamond necklace which supposedly went down with the ship. What they find instead is a drawing of a woman wearing the necklace, which is broadcast on the news. The woman in the picture recognizes herself and phones Lovett, who has her flown out to his exploration vessel on the high seas. There she tells her story to Lovett and his team.
In 1912, Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslett), a young lady belonging to society's upper class, boards the Titanic for the ship's first Atlantic crossing, from Southampton, England to New York. She is engaged to Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), an heir to old money, and a snob in every sense of the word. On board, Rose feels the stifling trappings of high-society's expectations, and resolves to escape from it all by throwing herself off the Titanic's stern, but is saved from her self-proclaimed fate by Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a passenger in third-class ("steerage", as it's referred to), who talks her out of jumping. Although for Rose the attraction is not immediate, a love affair soon develops between the two, which endangers Rose's social standing as well as her engagement to the jealous Cal.
The story sounds very simple, and perhaps even unexciting, but through solid performances by the leads and good direction by Cameron, a good movie comes through. DiCaprio is marvelous as the young, but worldly-wise Jack, playing the role with the confidence usually found in older actors. His is a character that is immediately likable, as he knows what he wants out of life and is charmingly able to handle a variety of situations. Girls are going to swoon over him. Winslet also proves herself a good actress, delivering her lines convincingly, and the quality of performances between Winslet and DiCaprio makes the relationship believable. The only problem with Winslet is that she does not carry herself in accordance with her character's upbringing. Simply by judgment of her gait, I was distracted from the fact that she was supposed to be an upper-crust debutante. Rather than demonstrate the poise one would expect her character to possess, she sometimes looks positively clumsy, and it unfortunately detracts from her otherwise great acting.
Billy Zane is cast well as the aristocratic snob Cal, since he has a certain look that immediately makes you want to hate him. His features are such that even when he smiles, there's something mistrustful about him, and when he scowls, he is evil incarnate. He's something like a porcelain version of Peter Gallagher, but a cheaper model. Like DiCaprio and Winslet, Zane slips comfortably into his role and plays it well. Backing up Zane is David Warner as Lovejoy, Cal's personal assistant (or "man" as they said at the turn of the century). No matter who else is in the cast, you can always count on a good performance by Warner, who seems to be made to play the distinguished gentleman with a gaze of steel and will to match. Additionally, there are a number of smaller fictional and non-fictional roles thrown in for color, such as Kathy Bates as "The Unsinkable" Molly Brown, Danny Nucci as Jack's friend Fabrizio De Rossi, Eric Braeden as John Jacob Astor, and even Bernard Fox as Colonel Archibald Gracie. Nice to see Dr. Bombay getting work.
Also scattered about are some of the other steerage passengers who are basically in the movie so you can feel sorry for them when they die. This by itself may have been largely compulsory in a film about the Titanic, but it transcends this status by putting these characters in direct conflict with the ship's crewmembers who strive to maintain order and assure that the first-class passengers are placed aboard the lifeboats before anyone else. In this way, TITANIC possesses a depth not usually found in action pictures. You don't just get a love story with a tragedy as a backdrop, but a very real account of class struggle as well.
As I mentioned before, the budget for this film was tremendous, and it certainly showed in the set dressing and special effects. The interiors of the Titanic are nearly breathtaking with their elaborate trimmings and intricate detail, and one has very little doubt that the layouts are authentic. With regard to the exteriors, I would dare anyone to point out a film in which a vessel has been recreated with such meticulousness or on such a scale. Cameron actually built a scale model of the Titanic in a water tank, but only had room for 90%, and therefore had to computer-generate the remaining 40 feet. Could've fooled me and everyone else in the theater, as the splicing is seamless.
Also of note in this film is the way the audience is presented with the anatomy of the disaster right at the beginning. We are told of where the iceberg struck the ship, how the flooding occurred, the way the ship sank, and why it did so in that manner. These technical details serve as a guide for later on when the action starts happening, and allow us to view the sinking with informed analytic detraction, in addition to the more conventional placement in the midst of mayhem and confusion.
In all, James Cameron's TITANIC is a good blend of love story, history, and action. The fact that the film runs longer than most at about three hours is almost unnoticed as the viewer's attention is held alternately by those three main elements, from the movie's intriguing beginning to it's satisfactory ending. In box office receipts, TITANIC the movie will undoubtedly live up to the unsinkable expectations of Titanic the ship.
Review posted December 29, 1997
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