The Unthinkable Unsinkable (Titanic [1998] (DVD))

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Titanic [1998] (DVD)
Date:	15/03/05 (436 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Outstanding effects, Beautifully made

Disadvantages: Lame love story, Too long

Ever since the fateful year of 1912 people have been fascinated by the fate of RMS Titanic. With a forthcoming auction of Titanic memorabilia expected to fetch record prices for items recovered from the doomed White Star liner, the legend lives on to this day with no dimming in the fervour and fascination that the public have for the unsinkable cruise liner. In movie terms there have been a number of efforts to recount the events that occurred between April 10th and 14th all those years ago. In 1958, Kenneth More starred in the romantic “A Night to Remember”. Suffering from the limitations of special effects in the 50’s, Titanic looked like an extravagant model lit up on a make-shift sea that took a little away from the final results. 39 years on and James Cameron and others spent close on $200 million that resulted in 11 Oscars and a movie to remember in a grandiose version of the eternal tragedy.
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Director: James Cameron
Run time: 194 mins
Cert: 12

Main cast:
Leonardo DiCaprio - Jack Dawson
Kate Winslet - Rose Dewitt Bukater
Billy Zane - Cal Hockley
Kathy Bates - Molly Brown
Frances Fisher - Ruth Dewitt Bukater
Gloria Stuart - Rose Dawson Calvert
Bill Paxton - Brock Lovett
Bernard Hill - Captain Smith
David Warner - Spicer Lovejoy
Victor Garber - Thomas Andrews
Jonathan Hyde - Bruce Ismay
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Let me start by saying that this is a difficult movie to review without a king size spoiler. A lot of the promotional material for Titanic shows her sinking so unless you’ve been living like a hermit in a cave in the middle of the Gobi desert then you’ll know that Titanic sinks. If you haven’t realised this then the first few frames of the movie will soon put you right. In that sense, the interest in the story is extraordinary bearing in mind that we know how everything will finish. In the case of the 1997 movie, the plot is generated by a sprawling loves story surrounding the 2 main characters – Di Caprio playing an Irish emigrant, Jack Dawson and Kate Winslet playing the archetypal English lady as Rose Dewitt Bukater. It’s against the backdrop of the Titanic voyage that their story is told.

Our tale is woven by Rose, now an old lady, who reminisces about events many years after the sinking of the ship. Centred around the rediscovery of “The Heart of the Ocean” – a precious piece of jewellery that she was wearing during the voyage, Rose tells how she embarked on the maiden journey from Southampton to New York accompanied by her intended, Cal Hockley (Billy Zane) together with their First Class entourage. During the voyage she meets up with Jack Dawson who is a care free artist intent on making his fortune in America. Finding him a free spirit, she falls for him much to the chagrin of Hockley who decides to get revenge on the enigmatic Irish man.

With the ship’s designer, Bruce Ismay (Jonathan Hyde) and Captain Smith (Bernard Hill) pushing the ship to its limits to gain publicity on arrival in New York, at 11.40pm 14th April 400 miles off Newfoundland, Titanic hits an iceberg and starts to sink. As the hysteria increases so does the subterfuge surrounding the love triangle between Di-Caprio, Winslet and Zane.

If there’s one thing that strikes you about Titanic it’s the care and attention that went into its making. Cameron is a notoriously hard working director with previous works like “Terminator” and “The Abyss” typifying his flair for special effects. The opening shots of the movie are simply spectacular. With cameras over two and a half miles below the Atlantic Ocean, Cameron together with the explorer Bill Paxton took footage of the actual ship wreck showing the amazing detail that the ship still has after all this time. Enough material was taken to produce “Ghosts of the Abyss” which is an incredible insight into what remains of the wreck today.

As for the actual story itself then it is difficult to achieve credibility when it’s the saga of the ship itself that draws the crowds. Cameron does a reasonable job in stringing together a coherent melodrama through the story of Rose and Jack but some will find it dull probably preferring the second half of the movie after the ship has struck the iceberg. Clearly this section of the movie is its strength. Cameron carefully pieces together his version of what rising hysteria must have looked like as realisation started to grip the crew and passengers that the ship wasn’t unsinkable after all.

The drama of those events is captured for me when a woman puts her 2 children to bed knowing that water is rushing in and that their fate is sealed. It’s that poignant air of resignation that makes the audience realise just how tragic events were in those terrifying hours.

With such a magnitude of production it was always going to be difficult outshining the structure surrounding the making of this movie. Kate Winslet was nominated as best actress for an Oscar for her part in the film and her demure display certainly convinces as the English rose. Di Caprio could be described as equally demure himself as the impish Irish Bohemian whilst Zane manages to attain an air of gentlemanly menace as the rotter, Cal Hockley.

However, this movie was never going to be about stellar acting and awards for best art-direction/set-direction, best cinematography, best costume design, best director, best effects/best sound editing to name but a few, it’s the movie itself that outshines everything else.

The mood of the story is beautifully captured by a wonderful James Horner score with Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” haunting the audience whilst taking in the shear scale of production. The score from the movie is available on CD and sold well on its release,

There is plenty of opportunity to air-brush fact and fiction in and out of the events of 1912. Cameron decided to turn Captain Smith into a hero as he plunges into the bridge moments before gallons of water consume him and sweep him into a watery grave. Speculation concerning Smith’s conduct and that maybe he wasn’t as responsible as he should have been is side stepped as is the mysterious failure to respond to SOS messages by a ship that was much closer to Titanic that The Capathia which eventually helped out. In saying that, Titanic is shown for the first time breaking in two with the fore and aft sinking separately with some outstanding special effects that show the aft tipping up to a perpendicular position with passengers hanging on to just about anything they can. Moreover, the scandal surrounding the blocking of the escape route for passengers in 3rd class accomodation is dealt with as the ship's stewards are ordered to lock the gates to the upper decks causing consternation and mayhem.

Cameron employs some stunning CGI to reproduce the huge scale of the number of passengers on the ship. With the computer adding in numerous virtual actors, many of the shots manage to capture the busyness of the decks without having to employ thousands of extras. That, together with the use of blue screen especially where Jack and Rose pretend that they are flying over the water at the very front of the ship is typical of the meticulous care that went into the film’s production.

Titanic won’t appeal to everyone. There are scenes with violence, plenty of peril and even mild nudity that stops it being a movie for kids. Notwithstanding, my 9-year-old boy has watched it numerous times being a huge aficionado of Titanic and he’s none the worse for the experience so I’ll leave that decision up to you as responsible parents. Personally, I enjoyed the movie although I did think that the run time is at least half an hour to long with some of the elements of the central love story unnecessary and peripheral to the main events. Titanic is a massive piece of work that pays suitable homage to one of the most amazing sequences of events in marine history. Definitely a movie to savour.

Thanks for reading

Marandina

Associated sites:

http://www.titanicmovie.com/

http://octopus.gma.org/space1/titanic.html

VHS and DVD available from Amazon from £5.99

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