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| Courtesy of 20th Century Fox |
Over the years, I’ve discussed a wide range of movies, from The Apartment to Smokey and the Bandit, Vertigo to Do the Right Thing, Citizen Kane to That Thing You Do! Some of these groundbreaking films are widely accepted as required viewing in a cinematic education. Others are personal favorites that aren’t necessarily considered classics, but I tried to make the argument that perhaps they should be.
I don’t think I have to work very hard to make the case for this week’s installment. Even the most cynical film scholars and critics will probably admit – albeit begrudgingly – that Titanic, James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster that overcame a troubled production and toxic pre-release buzz to shatter box office records and win a staggering 11 Oscars, has earned the moniker.
Not just because the heartbreaking epic, which combined old-fashioned melodrama with cutting-edge technology, captivated audiences worldwide two decades ago. But also in the many ways it went on to influence filmmaking techniques and pop culture, as well as establish its talented, astonishingly beautiful leads as two of the most respected, in-demand actors in the industry.
When Titanic hit theaters 20 years ago (can you believe it’s been that long?), I was 16 and a junior in high school – which means I’m an eyewitness to how that movie hit like a nuclear blast with young people.
It opened right before Christmas and I remember seeing it that weekend, primarily because I loved Terminator 2 and True Lies, and I was curious to see why an action director like Cameron wanted to go from explosions to a schmaltzy love story. Let’s be honest, I also wanted to see if rumors of an egomaniacal director hell-bent on bankrupting a studio turned out to be true.
Three-and-a-half hours later, I walked out of the theater a blubbering, snot-nosed mess. I’m sure other kids from school were there, but I couldn’t get it together. Besides, their emotions were probably wrecked too.
I still wasn’t sure if Titanic was going to be a critical or financial success (this was the pre-internet era, before Rotten Tomatoes and Box Office Mojo), but I was living proof that the movie played viewers like a fiddle. I went home and raved about it to my parents and little brother, telling them they had to see it.
I convinced them to go back with me the next weekend, but something weird happened: the movie was sold out. Not just the showtime we picked – all of them. I was baffled. Movies selling out wasn’t a thing, at least not in sleepy little Carrollton. You walked up to the window 10 minutes before the movie started and bought your ticket, simple as that.
My family must’ve seemed like visitors from another country who didn’t understand strange American customs. (“What’s this ‘sold out’ you speak of?”) Again, this was pre-internet, so people weren’t buying tickets on Fandango. They were making a special trip to the theater to buy tickets for another day. It was unheard of.
That’s probably the first time I realized something special was happening with Titanic, but I got more and more confirmation over the next few weeks. Because it was so hard to get tickets, seeing it became an event. A point of pride. A status symbol. People compared their number of viewings and the different details they noticed each time.
Titanic-mania even affected me, a guy who liked it a lot, but was by no means a die-hard fan. Between various combinations of friends and relatives who decided to see what all the fuss was about, I ended up watching it seven times during its theatrical run. That didn’t happen with another movie before or since. I’m almost certain it never will. I think I watched it one more time when it hit home video in September 1998 (remember those two VHS tapes?), but that was it.
Because the passage of time does weird things to our brains, at some point I started to view Titanic through the prism of the phenomenon it spawned (that Celine Dion song playing everywhere; grainy news footage of weepy, hyperventilating teenage girls; the box office horse race – “How much money will it make?” “How many weekends will it stay number one?”) rather than the film itself.
That changed a few weeks ago when my seven-year-old daughter came home from school, excited to tell me what she learned that day. Did I know about this boat from a long time ago called the Titanic that hit an iceberg and all these people died? It was “really sad,” she concluded.
I told her I had, in fact, heard about it. That when I was a teenager I read a lot about the tragedy and watched the movie a ridiculous amount of times. Her eyes lit up. “There’s a movie?!”
After a lengthy internal debate ("Is she too young for this?"), I popped in the Blu-ray, assuming she’d watch 15 or 20 minutes before she got bored and wanted to do something else. Once again, I underestimated Cameron’s filmmaking prowess. The kid was transfixed and so was I – she watched the whole movie.
With all the pop culture ephemera burned away, a new generation of viewers can experience Titanic as “just” a movie, which was – after all – Cameron’s original intention. It’s not subtle by any stretch of the imagination, making its well-intentioned points about class, gender and man’s hubris with the poise of a chainsaw, but that’s part of its “aw, shucks” charm.
Rose and Jack (Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, in the roles that will be mentioned in the first lines of their obituaries) are a young, gorgeous couple experiencing the freedom and passion of first love in the most luxurious setting imaginable. It would be weird if the movie wasn’t sappy and melodramatic.
The same goes for the harrowing second half, which still rips your heart out after all these years. To find a love like that, only to have fate rip it away? While 1,500 other people around you face certain death? It’s an experience that doesn’t really call for emotional restraint.
While dozens of individual moments still existed in my memory bank – “I’m the king of the world!,” “draw me like one of your French girls” (don’t worry, I distracted my daughter during that and the car scene), and “I’ll never let go” (yes, Jack could’ve fit on that door) – I was surprised by how much the story’s bookends affected me this time around.
Part of that is losing Gloria Stewart and Bill Paxton (both outstanding) in recent years, adding a new degree of melancholy to these sequences. But mostly I think it’s because I was closer in age to young Jack and Rose when I first experienced the story, filled with those heightened emotions that come with being a teenager.
When I watched it with my daughter, I really connected with Brock Lovett, Paxton’s character. Like him, I approached Titanic with snarkiness and cynicism (“Can you believe how dumb it was to obsess over this movie?”), only to have all that melt away as the narrative progressed. By the end, when the camera pans across those black and white photos as the older version of Rose sleeps peacefully (is she sleeping, or…?), I was a mess once again.
With Jack’s help, even though he wasn’t physically with her, Rose was able to approach life on her own terms rather than those forced on her by society. Then, whether in a dream or the afterlife, she’s reunited with him after decades that he only existed in her memories? Roll your eyes all you want, that’s powerful stuff.
Titanic is rated PG-13 for disaster related peril and violence, nudity, sensuality and brief language.
Grade: A
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