TITANIC *** out of **** Expensive hull, emotional hollow What does $200 million look like all wet? In TITANIC, it looks pretty good (did it have a choice?), and that's pretty much it.. The path towards ecstasy is velvet-lined when James Cameron the director is given millions to spend. He has done capably with big budgets before, and he delivers with more numbers. No hesitation here to show off the monumental scale and sizeable casualty list. And sadly, that is the only ecstasy TITANIC delivers, the thrall of size and scale going under with a receipt attached. Cameron demonstrates solid and savvy planning for TITANIC, flashing price tags early on. Long, too long, before the TITANIC's date with the iceberg, we witness a heartless, opportunistic modern-day salvage of the Titanic searching for a lost jewel emblematically called The Heart of the Ocean. In the process we awe over the Titanic’s current unreachable state fathoms below, as well as giving us a teasing computer simulation of the disaster to come. With his reported obsession over the Titanic’s physical detail, from the construction of an actual set only fractionally less than the actual ship, and including the recreation of commissioned china and carpets to be smashed and soaked later, you would logically presume that Cameron would have devoted the same curt attention to his script. But, alas, no, here is where TITANIC becomes itself an emotional iceberg. To try to hold our attention until the moment, Cameron the scriptwriter trots out a poor little rich girl-worldly boy with a heart of gold romance – not too imaginative but again a solid and savvy choice (the investment must be salvaged at the box office still). But shallow stereotype is about as deep and sophisticated as Cameron will venture - witness the Italian immigrant with an accent no voice coach would claim credit for. Even worse, Cameron's dialogue too often falls victim to bouts of eye-rolling ridiculousness. Best not to dwell on the triteness of lines such as "A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets." Seems our English Rose (Kate Winslett) is none-too-happy, nay, suicidal even, over her forthcoming marriage to the callow Cal (Billy Zane), a wealthy industrialist destined to inherit his father's businesses. With unconsidered quickness she makes a run for the stern, thoughts of a watery death overboard flashing in her mind as an end to her corseted posh but hollow future. It is here at the railing where she strikes up a conversation with the American bohemian artist Jack (Leonardo di Caprio), and seasickness from Cameron's cornball dialogue begins. The romance becomes a fine time to show off the grandeur before it is lost in the drenching. Rose is our ticket to the accommodations of the cosseted rich as they traipse along the grand staircases in the Grand Salon on their way to their stuffy rituals, while Jack shows us the earthiness of the sacrificial third class citizens snuggling in their cramped steerage compartments without a view. Soon Jack steers Rose away from the snooty tycoons to do a beery tabletop jig with the unkempt but oh-so-noble below. There is also a backseat horizontal slide, chases along the ship's length and depth, search for keys at predictably inopportune moments, wailing children to be saved - has cliché been exhausted yet? Oh, and of course, they get very wet. Both di Caprio and Winslett are saving graces to the romance in their earnest obliviousness to wooden lines (his lines are conveniently contemporary - "Can I bum a smoke?"- in comparison with the more moneyed, for appeal, apparently, since this and many others seem oddly ahistorical) . But dreadful as a ship sinking may be, this is not a romance you would choose to delay spectacle with. In TITANIC the 3 hour-plus film, the sinking doesn’t come soon enough with love like this. Throughout our tour portents of doom are delivered with the subtlety of a battle-ax: not enough lifeboats? Check. No binoculars? Check. Inattentive iceberg watch? Check. Full steam ahead through iceberg-strewn waters? Yes please, and do remind the Captain it's time for his tea break. That Cameron gets the look of the film right is TITANIC's only consolation, and when the ship finally hits the iceberg Cameron the action director's well-oiled pistons hit their stride. When the Titanic goes perpendicular and what seems to be humans plummet (the casualties here are mere cardboards, so uninteresting they are), bumpily, to their watery deaths, Cameron gets our full attention. (At this moment, our lovers, clinging to the railing, recall that this is where they first met, oblivious to everything except themselves while enjoying a bird's eye view of the people dying below.) Tit for tat, Cameron justifies the budget with equally impressive numbers onscreen. How does Cameron make you comprehend the tragedy? With numbers: show the masses in panic over the few remaining lifeboats, show the masses being crushed by large pieces of steel, show a mass of drifting bodies. Nothing complicated, nothing human, just awe at the numbers. The salvage crew captain muses, "Three years working on Titanic, and I still didn't get it." The same can be said for Cameron; the Titanic was trumpeted for size and scale, and Cameron saw nothing but. $200 million can buy lots of eye-candy, and it shows, but can it buy heart and soul? In TITANIC, the answer is no. B TITANIC Directed and written by James Cameron. USA, 1997 Review completed on December 26, 1997. |