The 1st of November marks 25 years since Jack and Rose failed to have the foresight to assess whether there was enough room on their makeshift raft to accommodate them both. Instead, Rose hogged the wood paneling, and Jack perished, sinking into the sub-zero waters of the murky Atlantic. As the icy grips of hypothermia set in, and Jack plummeted alongside the RMS Titanic, one of the most prominent cinematic images of all time was born. The disaster that killed more than one and a half thousand people has lived long in the memory 110 years later, undeniably aided by the legend of Jack and Rose bringing the ordeal back to life via the medium of cinema 85 years on from the great disaster.
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Since the movie’s release in 1997, Titanic has occupied both number one and two spots respectively in the highest-grossing movie charts, breaking countless records in the process. Titanic director James Cameron’s fascination with the ship and its wreckage 13,000 feet below the sea’s surface led to the Avatar creator making the 4,000-meter pilgrimage to the seabed and to the rusty, plankton-infested remains of a fallen giant of the seas. Having ventured to the remnants of the ironically named “unsinkable ship,” as well as leading a simply fascinating life, it’s clear Cameron is still pestered with the same, pressing question: Why didn’t Rose make space for Jack on the float?
Masterpiece or Disasterpiece?
Paramount Pictures
Technically, due to the fact that it’s based on the very premise of a disaster, Titanic is essentially a disasterpiece. However, Titanic romped home at the 1998 Oscars, cleaning up award after award, winning over the hearts of those at the Academy. Yet despite the Oscar adulation, it was by no means an emphatic, unifying critical triumph, and 25 years on it remains as divisive as ever.
Like the passenger liner, Cameron’s movie ventured into uncharted waters; it provided a very literal “in-depth” insight into the wreckage and offered engrossing, unprecedented access to never-seen-before footage of the submerged shipwreck. The view of the maiden voyager through the silver screen gifts the audience comprehension of the sheer size, scale, and beauty of the RMS Titanic, and the craft that must have gone into making it. It does this through the real-life videos at the beginning of the film, the immaculately intricate detail of the set design, and the supremely attentive replication of the ship itself, which all combine epically.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet Made Titanic Huge
Paramount Pictures Releasing
With the budget the biggest of its kind, it came as no surprise that Titanic procured the services of two of the film industry’s hottest new assets, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, both fresh off critically acclaimed Shakespeare adaptations with Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. Winslet stars as a 17-year-old aristocrat, Rose DeWitt Bukater, the movie’s symbol of wealth, and class, due to be married to Cal (Billy Zane, another socialite on board the doomed ship) in order to salvage her and her widowed mother’s upper-class social status.
DiCaprio with his boyish good looks, and on-screen charisma, portrays artist, Jack Dawson, a member of the Titanic’s third class, away from the chandeliers, 9-course dining, and royal suites, he occupies the four-man dormitories of the lower decks, having won his ticket in the chance game of poker. The pair become acquainted through a questionable series of events, and together they form an impermissible, unrequited romantic bond.
Titanic Definitely Isn’t Unsinkable
However, the acting abilities of its cast and the arresting majesty of the movie’s production can only sail the film so far before the watertight doors are invariably breached by a patchy, bordering on ostentatious narrative. Aside from multiple historical inaccuracies, the major quip with Titanic appears to be the movie’s script. It’s difficult to escape the cheesiness of romance movies, the overzealous declarations of love, the grandiose hackneyed clichés, and the inevitable heartbreak, all set to a dated soundtrack that hasn’t exactly aged well.
Arguably, Titanic is a film driven by melodrama, sentiment, and this tragic inevitability that festers throughout the (almost) three-hour runtime of the ship’s and its passenger’s demise. We all know what became of the Titanic, the story of its cataclysmic end, and Cameron’s movie practically reveals the only unknown of a fictional love, set against a real-life catastrophe within the opening sequences. It has also been said that the film’s social awareness of the disparity between the upper and lower class is symbolic of the capitalist, western society in which we live, but that the perspective it offers, like the script, has a certain air of predictability and flimsiness.
Undeniably, Titanic as a film has several plot holes that question its credibility, but as a spectacle, and love story, it really is the ultimate tale of forbidden love, and highlights the systemic issue that money is power, and with that, while Rose lives, Jack, like a Captain that goes down with his ship, goes down with his prohibited love and as an unspoken member of the lower-class.
