Titanic (1997) | Abenity

Titanic (1997) (PG-13)

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates

Release Date: December 19, 1997

Runtime: 3 hr. 14 mins.

Genre: Drama, Romance

The journey of "Titanic" begins in the present, at the site of the ship's watery grave, two-and-a-half miles under the ocean surface. An ambitious fortune hunter (Bill Paxton) is determined to plumb the treasures of this once-stately ship, only to bring to the surface a story left untold. The tragic ruins melt away to reveal the glittering palace that was Titanic as it prepares to launch on its maiden voyage from England. Amidst the thousands of well-wishers bidding a fond bon voyage, destiny has called two young souls, daring them to nurture a passion that would change their lives forever. Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) is a 17-year-old, upper-class American suffocating under the rigid confines and expectations of Edwardian society who falls for a free-spirited young steerage passenger named Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio). Once he opens her eyes to the world that lies outside her gilded cage, Rose and Jack's forbidden love begins a powerful mystery that ultimately echoes across the years into the present. Nothing on earth is going to come between them -- not even something as unimaginable as the sinking of Titanic.

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Review

'Titanic' Sinks Again (Spectacularly)

by KENNETH TURAN , TIMES FILM CRITIC

Friday December 19, 1997

To the question of the day--what does $200 million buy?--the 3-hour-and-14-minute ''Titanic'' unhesitatingly answers: not enough.

Note that despite the hopes of skeptics, aghast at the largest film
budget of modern times, money enough to run a full-dress presidential
campaign or put a serious dent in illiteracy, the answer is not nothing. When you are willing to build a 775-foot, 90% scale model of the doomed ship and sink it in a 17-million-gallon tank specially constructed for the purpose, you are going to get a heck of a lot of production value for your money. Especially if your name is James Cameron.

More than that, at ''Titanic's'' two-hour mark, when most films have
sense enough to be winding down, this behemoth does stir to a kind of
life. With writer-director Cameron, a virtuoso at large-scale
action-adventure extravaganzas serving as ringmaster, the detailing of
the ship's agonies (compressed here from a real-life two hours and 40
minutes to a bit more than an hour) compels our interest absolutely.

But Cameron, there can be no doubt, is after more than oohs and aahs. He's already made ''The Terminator'' and ''Terminator 2''; with ''Titanic'' he has his eye on ''Doctor Zhivago'' / ''Lawrence of Arabia'' territory. But while his intentions are clear, Cameron lacks the skills necessary to pull off his coup. Just as the hubris of headstrong shipbuilders who insisted that the Titanic was unsinkable led to an unparalleled maritime disaster, so Cameron's overweening pride has come unnecessarily close to capsizing this project.

For seeing ''Titanic'' almost makes you weep in frustration. Not because of the excessive budget, not even because it recalls the unnecessary loss of life in the real 1912 catastrophe, which saw more than 1,500 of the 2,200-plus passengers dying when an iceberg sliced the ship open like a can opener. What really brings on the tears is Cameron's insistence that writing this kind of movie is within his abilities. Not only isn't it, it isn't even close.

Cameron has regularly come up with his own scripts in the past, but in a better world someone would have had the nerve to tell him or he would have realized himself that creating a moving and creditable love story is a different order of business from coming up with wisecracks for Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Instead, what audiences end up with word-wise is a hackneyed,
completely derivative copy of old Hollywood romances, a movie that reeks of phoniness and lacks even minimal originality. Worse than that, many of the characters, especially the feckless tycoon Cal Hockley (played by Billy Zane) and Kathy Bates' impersonation of the Unsinkable Molly Brown, are cliches of such purity they ought to be exhibited in film schools as examples of how not to write for the screen.

It is easy to forget, as you wait for the iceberg to arrive and shake things up, how excellent an idea it was to revisit for modern audiences the sinking of what was the largest moving object ever built. Numerous films have been made on the subject, with even the Third Reich taking a shot with a version that concluded, not surprisingly, that the sinking was ''an eternal accusation against England's greed.'' As Steven Biel wrote in ''Down With the Old Canoe,'' a fascinating cultural history of public reaction to the event, ''The Titanic disaster begs for resolution--and always resists it.''

One reason this version is so long is a modern framing story involving nautical treasure hunter Brock Lovett (Cameron veteran Bill Paxton), who is scouring the Titanic's wreck (it was located in 1985) for a fabulously expensive blue diamond called ''The Heart of the Ocean'' that was lost on board.

What Lovett turns up instead is a drawing of a nude young woman wearing the jewel. News of that find prompts a phone call from 101-year-old Rose Dawson Calvert (Gloria Stuart), who says it's her in the drawing. Lovett flies Rose (whom Cameron modeled on artist Beatrice Wood) out to join his expedition. The bulk of ''Titanic'' is her recollection of what happened before, during and after that great ship
went down.

Young Rose (now played by Kate Winslet) boarded the Titanic as a
17-year-old wearing a very large hat and metaphorical shackles. ''To me it was a slave ship,'' she recalls, ''taking me to America in chains.'' In plainer English she was being forced by her snooty mother Ruth DeWitt Bukater into a (gasp!) loveless marriage with Cal Hockley, an arrogant and wealthy snob for whom the phrase ''perpetual sneer'' was probably invented.

Rose may be a 17-year-old, but she knows a thing or two. She makes offhanded references to Freud, a wise gentleman no one else on board has heard of, and during an impromptu shopping spree she managed to buy works by Picasso, Degas and Monet despite Hockley's dismissive belief that they ''won't amount to a thing.'' Clearly, this prodigy of taste and discernment deserves better than Mr. Perpetual Sneer, no matter how rich he is.

Enter Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a madcap artist and cherubic scamp who wins his steerage ticket in a dockside card game. Jack is staggered by a glimpse of Rose, and though a conveniently placed Irish lad advises him ''you'd as like have angels flying out of your arse as get next to the likes of her,'' he's not the kind of young man to give up easily.

Sure enough, despite the presence of 2,200 other passengers and crew, it's only Jack who's around to save the day when a distraught Rose considers suicide in a flattering evening gown. Despite the best efforts of mother Ruth (Frances Fisher) and Hockley's snarling valet Spicer Lovejoy (David Warner), Jack and Rose are irresistibly drawn to each other. She improves his manners (not hard to do), he teaches her how to spit like a man, and they spend quality time in photogenic locations like the ship's towering prow.

Both Winslet and DiCaprio are capable actors (though his brash brat routine is wearing thin) but they are victimized, as is everyone else, by dialogue that has the self-parodying ring of Young Romance comics. ''You could just call me a tumbleweed blowing in the wind,'' Jack says, adding later, ''sooner or later the fire I love about you is going to burn out.'' Most weighted down by this kind of blather are the fatuous Hockley, who has to say things like ''you filth'' and Bates' Molly Brown, a character so relentlessly folksy she'd be at home on ''The Beverly Hillbillies.''

Finally, after so much time has passed you fear the iceberg has slept through its wake-up call, disaster strikes the ship at 11:50 on the

Titanic (1997) (PG-13)

Review

Synopsis