#83 Titanic (1997)

Plot summary (with spoilers): An earring wearing Bill Paxton and his merry men are going on a deep sea expedition to search the sunken ship Titanic. They're looking for a diamond necklace called the "Heart of the Ocean", which was owned by a villainous cartoon character named Cal Hockley.  They locate Cal's safe and bring it up onto their boat, but when they open it, there's no diamond. There is, however, a drawing of a naked woman wearing said diamond.

Said naked woman is Rose Dawson Calvert, and she's 101 years young nowadays.  She was 17 when she boarded the Titanic. She contacts Bill Paxton to tell him the story of the necklace.  Actually, she just jerks him around for three hours and then drops the necklace into the ocean, because old people are mean.

Rose's story:

She's from a wealthy family, but the family is secretly poor now.  She needs to marry a rich man and according to her mother, the only thing she has of value is her family name.  So, she is betrothed in an arranged marriage to Cal Hockley, and she and her mother are heading to America with Cal and a bunch of other rich snooty people for the wedding.  In this movie, James Cameron would like you to know that rich people are evil and poor people are tragically noble.  And then James Cameron will give you a shiny new nickel and a pat on the head before flying to Belize to get a print copy of the latest positive review of Avatar.

Jack and his irrelevant Italian friend (let's say...um, Gino) win tickets to the Titanic at the last minute in a poker game.  They race onto the ship and board it just in time.  Not sure how Rose knows about that part, since she wasn't there, but anyways...

Jack is king of the world!

Rose wants to kill herself. She climbs around to the outside of the bow of the ship, and looks down.  Jack happens upon her and talks her out of it, in part by scaring with her tales of how cold the water will be. He attempts to pull her back over the railing, but she slips and almost falls into the ocean. He holds onto her tight, but her cries alert others including Cal and his evil Henchman Spicer Lovejoy.  Wow, really?  Spicer Lovejoy. Okay, James. Cal and Spicer Lovejoy show up just in time to see Jack pulling Rose back over the railing.  Cal accuses Jack of trying to push her over, but Rose says that she just slipped. As an expression of gratitude, Cal invites Jack to have dinner with them the next night.

At the dinner, Jack is uncomfortable around all the rich people, but Rose and the rootin' tootin Unsinkable Molly Brown put him at ease. After the dinner, Jack passes Rose a note suggesting they meet down in steerage for a "real" party.

Because poor people are awesome and rich people suck, Rose meets Jack down in steerage and all the third-class people  carouse and dance and drink and share stories about how noble and long-suffering they are.

The next day, Cal somehow learns that Rose was down there in steerage and slaps her face.  Hard!  Then he twirls his mustache and looks around in vain for a railroad track to tie her to. Rose's mom gets in on it, telling Rose that they'll be destitute if she doesn't marry Cal.

When Jack encounters Rose the next day, she's conflicted and resists him for twenty seconds or so, before running off with him. Then they run all around the ship from Spicer Lovejoy, because he is crazy or something. Then Rose allows Jack to draw a nudie sketch of her, because there was no TV back then, and then later fucks him in the back seat of a old-timey car. (The sweaty hand print on the window is admittedly pretty awesome). While they're on the deck, the ship sort of barely grazes a giant iceberg. Well, it's about damn time!  What is this, Titanic or The Love Boat?!  Am I right, guys?! High five!

The ship shudders a bit, but mostly seems okay.  People have snowball fights with the snow left by the iceberg. No one is concerned until Rose and Jack overhear the Captain and some crew members talking about the damage down below.

 Finally, Cal and Spicer Lovejoy catch up to the lovebirds and Cal surreptitiously slips the Heart of the Ocean necklace into Jack's pocket and then accuses him of stealing it. They search him and find it, then Spicer Lovejoy "arrests" Jack and handcuffs him to some metal pipe.  Rose is distraught, but goes along with it. She sees the ship's designer on deck looking all distraught. She confronts him and he confesses to her that the ship will sink in about an hour. Unfortunately, this will play out in real time. So, Molly Brown and Rose's mom get on a rescue boat, and Rose herself is about to board when someone tells Cal that there aren't enough lifeboats on the ship and only about half the people will live. "Yeah...the better half," says Cal, because that's how people actually talk.  Rose then realizes that Cal sucks and so therefore Jack must be innocent. She runs off. Cal chases after her, as Molly and mom are lowered into the sea.

Rose goes down to the lower decks and finds Jack handcuffed.  She eventually locates an axe and frees him. The water is high now and they swim around until they reach a higher deck. They come across Gino and the noble poor people in third class, who are locked down below.  Jack frees them and they all run around for awhile, accomplishing little. On deck, chaos reigns as boats are being lowered despite being half full, and a full-blown panic erupts.  All of this still looks pretty cool, and is excellently blocked and directed.

Jack gets Rose to another rescue boat, but she won't board it without him.  Cal shows up and puts his coat around her, and of course the necklace is in the coat.  D'oh!  Cal tells Rose that he's made arrangements for he and Jack to get on another boat, and for some reason Rose believes this and gets on.  As the boat is being lowered, she suddenly realizes that of course Cal wouldn't do that and she jumps off.  Jack runs down to her and is angry at her for not getting on the boat.  Cal sees them embracing and goes into full psycho mode.  He pulls out a gun and starts shooting at them. They run away, going lower into the sinking ship.

More awesome stuff on deck as people start falling to their deaths. Cal kidnaps a kid and tells a crew member it's his, in order to get on a boat.

By the time Jack and Rose get back on deck, the boat starts to break in half.  As it raises up, people die.  As it lowers, people die. Lots of people die, awesomely. Rose and Jack hang on the outside of the railing as the boat is at a ninety degree angle to the sea, and it looks as awesome as you remember. Finally, the whole boat sinks. Jack locates Rose and and puts her on a piece of the boat he found. There's not room enough for two, so he just clings to it beside her.

On one of the survivor boats, Molly Brown shouts that they should row over and start rescuing people. The crew member says that it would be too dangerous. Molly tries to get the other women to rise up against the guy and start saving people, but none of them back her up. She sits down, defeated.

Finally, a rescue boat does move in to get people. Rose sees the boat and tries to get Jack's attention. But he's dead from hypothermia. She tries to call out to them, but can't raise her voice above a whisper.  She lets go of Jack's dead hand and as he sinks into the sea, she jumps over to a dead crew member with a whistle around his neck.  She blows the whistle as hard as she can, and attracts the rescue boat to her.

Back in the present, Bill Paxton and his crew are sad and feel bad about themselves for not caring more about a bunch of strangers who would be dead by now, anyway.

We learn that Rose took Jack's name and created a whole new life in America. She also inexplicably kept the necklace the whole time, even though it had nothing to do with Jack and in fact belonged to a man she hated. She throws it into the ocean so that Bill Paxton will never realize his life's work.

You're up, Celine.  Play us out.

Review: James Cameron does certain things really well.  I watched Avatar.  I enjoyed the hell out of Avatar.  But even as I was watching it, my brain was saying, "you know that writing is terrible, don't you?  You know these characters are cardboard cutouts, don't you?"  "Shut up, brain!  Pretty colors!  3D!! Giant scary monster things that fly!  WHEEEE!!!"

The problem with that is, of course that even the most special of special effects become less special with age. One day, Avatar's effects will look as lame as say, King Kong's do now. The trick in making people forgive that is to have a good story and good writing and good characters.  These are things that James Cameron does not do well.

Titanic is a good example of that. I saw it in the original run, and sat slack-jawed in wonderment with the rest of my theatre-mates went she sank into the sea. Even as I watched it today, I still got goosebumps at the wonderful vertical boat POV with Jack and Rose on the railing.  14 years later, the effects still hold up surprisingly well, so my theory doesn't have to be tested, yet.  But I wonder what will happen 14 years from now.  Because of course, the love story is trite.  The "class warfare" nonsense is simplistic and pandering.  Billy Zane is just flat-out horrible and utterly unconvincing as a human being.  In reality, the real Molly Brown really did commandeer the rescue boat with the help of other women and saved lives that night. Cameron rewrote history...why?  Because somehow making the character utterly useless and pointless was preferable?  Ugh. I really just wish Cameron would have the humility to understand what he does well, and what he doesn't, and just become the world's greatest technical director, and leave the story up to someone who knows what they're doing. I bet a Spielberg/Cameron collaboration would be pretty great, in fact.

Stars: Two and a half out of five.

Up next, we're back on track with "In the Heat of the Night" and "Silence of the Lambs".