This is perhaps the fastest three hour movie I've seen.
OK, a whole bunch of things. Yes, James Cameron, one of the foremost action directors of this day (and we won't mention the Academy Awards last year), had apparently spent some $200M to make a teen romance featuring that well-worn theme of carpe diem that's been threaded through what feels like every other American movie of the past decade or two. This is serious chutzpah. The results are stunning.
The plot is simple: young, upper class woman in an arranged marriage meets starving artist on a boat trip, falls in love and is redeemed, her spirit is set free. She doesn't marry into arrangement and strictures, but instead seizes the day. The choices are black and white, without shades of gray or moral choices. We've seen this fable any number of times, and there really are no surprises in how this story is told. There are no twists; the ending is expected; the acting, Kate Winslet excepted, sucked. But Cameron tells this story reasonably well.
And he weaves this story into that of the Titanic, and gives this theme of carpe diem prominence over all the other stories and fables that you can extract from the sinking. "Titanic" is mythological: there are the morals of hubris, of class confrontation, of one's conduct in facing death, of dilemnas and choices of survival and survivors. These themes are present in Cameron's film, but they're secondary threads. The love story between Winslet and DiCarpio is primary, and many of these subsidiary ideas can be interpreted through it.
So, just to hit the points, the working poor stuck in Third Class, on their way to America to make a new life, have the noble poverty thing going for them, an exubrence and freedom in simple things. In contrast is the self-appointed royalty in First Class, who air kiss, wear corsets, and are merely on seasonal migration between Europe and America. They're no fun. You can imagine where DiCaprio has a cabin, and where the bad guys come from. (Interestingly, we don't see Second Class passengers, who presumably would be middle class, perhaps returning from a once in a lifetime tour of Europe. I suppose this would have clouded the issue. Oh, random semi-ironic fact: the largest cruise ship in the world today, which I think makes Titanic look like an overgrown tug boat, belongs to Carnival "Kathie Lee" Cruises, making circuits of the Carribean, a sea free of icebergs. Presumably, the people on this ship may be exclusively middle class.) The hubris bit with Titanic is obvious, though it's extended to First Class passengers, when he men retire to cigars and cognac after dinner -- their illusions of power are as fragile and as vulnerable to strokes of fortune as the ship itself. And so on.
The theme of carpe diem is built through two main motifs: time and luck. Clocks and reminders of time are everywhere in the film. The ship departs at a specific time, and the collision with the iceberg is noted with due percision. DiCarpio meets Winslet next to the clock, the ship is due to sink in an hour, the Carpathian won't reach the wreck for four. The Titanic's architect, while waiting for the ship to go down, spends a moment to correct a clock's time against his watch. And the distance between now and then is 84 years. Time is fleeting, permanence is an illusion, so seize the day. Similarly, luck manifests by itself, and you can't presume to make your own. DiCarpio gets on board through a lucky hand of poker, changing his life and Winslet's. Cal the Evil Fiance presumes to make his own luck, but this is silliness. The moral is almost Taoist: let Fortune take charge, live day by day, and attempts to control your own fate are futile and counterproductive.
A few moments that may seem cheesy in any other film somehow works in this one: Winslet and DiCaprio at the ship's prow, flying over the ocean through belief and a strong breeze; the dolphins escorting the Titanic as she heads to the open ocean. These images are used earnestly, without irony, and Cameron invokes a strong enough illusion to make them work. Most amazingly and most effectively, the superimpossion of the corrupted wreck at the bottom of the ocean with the bright, shining ship in life. Cameron evokes ghosts in these transitions.
In addition to these scenes that walk the fine line between cheesiness and wonder, Cameron is able to vividly invoke disaster and hell. There's the majestic scene when the stern rises up and then breaks apart from the rest of the ship. The law of gravity clearly hasn't been revoked. And perhaps most haunting is this vision from Dante, as a lone lifeboat goes back to look for survivors. Bodies bob on the ocean, suspended by their life jackets. And the life boat picks through this grotesque flotsam, guided only by flashlights. It's a surreal image, very stark and invocative of the Inferno's ninth circle.
I think I've meandered about this film enough.
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