On the surface, Titanic’s redeeming qualities may seem as barely visible as a giant iceberg lurking in the north Atlantic sea. Crummy dialogue. Celine Dion warbling about hearts going on. Leonardo DiCaprio’s fringe curtains. The infuriating probability that if Kate Winslet’s Rose had just squidged up a bit there would have definitely been room for two on that raft. James Cameron’s 1997 disasterpiece was, in many ways, dodgy like the ocean liner’s own detector system. It was a box office ripper and an Oscars guzzler, for sure, but was at the same time rubbished for being the most expensive chick flick ever made ($200m, long since eclipsed by other blockbusters). To some eyes it was merely a hypothermic romance schmaltzily clomped together by an action auteur known for making Arnold Schwarzenegger famous in The Terminator.
But now we’ve got that out of the way, it’s high time that Titanic got its dues as one of the best-picture-winning major players. I sense your sinking feeling, but here goes. Let’s hear it for the film that told the story of one of the greatest ever maritime catastrophes with the aid of a high-class gal with issues and a hot guy from steerage rutting in a car. Let’s hear it for the love story of the 1990s, the one that included a scene where one paints the other in the nuddy. Let’s hear it for the technical feats, the six-acre, 1.3m-tonne, 750-foot-long replica of the ship that was created for the set. Infamous toy thrower Cameron may have recently bleated about how unfair it is that blockbusters are rarely considered for the best picture Oscar anymore – it’s not – but his comments at least underline how big and record-breaking the best movies once could go. An estimated 85% of what you see onscreen occurred “in-camera” (the rest was left to CGI effects). You just don’t get that with Captain America.
And for crying out loud, let’s just hear it for some star-crossed romance against all odds. (Speaking of which, DiCaprio was cast as Jack after his turn in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, presumably as a cheap alternative to Brad Pitt – another great 90s-by-way-of-old-times doomed love.) There is, I feel, a vast generational divide when it comes to giving Titanic the critical eye. Had I been 18-plus at the time Titanic was dominating the box office, I might have turned my nose up at its mainstream-baiting epicness, its embarrassment of scale, and I might feel differently about it now. But then, aged 11, it was everything I wanted from a romantic epic and more. I thought that dating would mean a young man hoisting me up on the hull of a boat and uttering the immortal line: “I’m flying.” I thought all sex involved a steamy handprint of approval on a vintage motor’s window. And I was immediately convinced that if I set foot on a boat thereafter, I would meet a chipper lad with floppy blonde hair, we’d fall in love, and then he’d die brutally as the boat sank into the murky depths. In fact, I don’t think I went aboard anything that floated for five years afterwards.
Has any film before or since turfed out so many classic moments? “I’m the king of the world!”; Rose’s arms flung open wide, wind in her hair; the old couple kissing tenderly in their cabin bed, knowing they will die; a maniacal Billy Zane as Cal chasing Rose with a gun; the gnawing terror of the working-class families stuck behind bars as the water rises. The dropped key! As fired-up action goes, Titanic was pretty rich in twists and turns. And however predictable or unbelievable they turned out to be, no one ever thought that Jack would turn blue and meet a watery end.
Perhaps the prism of nostalgia really does eclipse all when it comes to Cameron’s unashamed piece of populism. And yet for 90s tweens, maybe teens, it was easily our Doctor Zhivago, even our Pretty in Pink at sea. Certainly I don’t think I could watch Titanic again without crying, or at least feeling that same rush of electric fear at how such an engineering spectacle could go so horribly wrong and how holiday flings never, ever survive. Its complete lack of awareness, its iron-clad sentimentality – “You jump, I jump!” – feels completely of its time and yet wholly undeniable. One reviewer praised Jack and Rose’s “aristocracy of the spirit” and, while crass, it’s a point well made. Films like Titanic may not make much sense to some now, their form may increasingly feel like a relic of the past, but above all the spirit of boundless romance, at any cost: that is Titanic’s takeaway emotion that, surely, continues to endure.
