Originally written: April 7 – 14, 2012
James Cameron’s Titanic changed my life. At least, to a degree. I know that seems like a wrought cliché in 2012, but in this instance it rings true 110%. It’s what got me interested in the history of the infamous ship, and its what made me an enthusiast of the ill-fated story and subsequent wreck that it claims. It was one of the key films in my life that managed to illicit such a prominent emotional response from (the then 9-year-old) me that something within said “This is what I want to do with my life: I want to tell stories that move people like this.”
Which is funny considering that I frequently state that I am very under whelmed by the first two and a half hours of the film.
I could go into a tirade right now, or my usual foaming-at-the-mouth “stark ranting mad” persona here, but I won’t. That’s not what this particular write up is about. I feel like I finally “get” what Cameron was truly attempting to pull out of his audience with this film. Yes the story he wrote was very basic and utilitarian, and some the characters were one-dimensional, but subsequent recent viewings due to the fast-approaching 100th Anniversary have given me a deeper insight than I had previously claimed in understanding what Cameron was attempting as a whole—particularly with the slow burn of the film. The ship only lasted 4 days, so illustrating as much of those four days as possible helps drive home the emotional gut check when the inevitable tragedy befalls the “unsinkable” ship. That’s fairly obvious to some. Yet there was something more…
There was something Cameron captured, something that I haven’t been able to quantify or describe properly, so this is my attempt. What I do know, is that it’s something that has little to do with the slightly superfluous love-story between Rose and Jack.
Let it be stated early in this piece, I believe Titanic is classified as a good movie in spite of the 140 minute love story that proceeds the disaster, not because of it. Titanic isn’t really about star-crossed lovers meeting on an ill-fated ocean liner. It’s a much deeper human interest story whose emotional depths stretches as far down as the 12,500 feet where the remains of Harland and Wolff’s epitome of early 1900’s luxury now resides in the North Atlantic ocean. In fact, all you would have to do is tell me the setup (poor boy / rich girl fall for each other), and then proceed to show me the beginning of the end, and personally I would be just as invested as I was with the final cut. The love story is basically compartmentalized by the scene where Rose jumps from the lifeboat back on the ship. That scene is so powerful due to what we know is going to befall the ship, the referential line of “you jump, I jump” only has its emotional power slightly boosted by its previous mention.
Now, obviously there are scenes that give us exposition behind Rose’s life catalyst known as Jack Dawson, since the story is really using first and second person narrative when Rose is recollecting back to the ship. This exposition is obviously there to make him an endearing character (9-year-old me thought he was a pretty badass dude, all things considered), so I can’t say that it’s entirely a wash. Still, I stand by my stance that there was something much deeper and more horrific that Cameron was able to illustrate beyond just the sudden birth and swift death of a classic romance.
...Like what happens when you get water in your Panavision film camera.
There are two scenes that are forever burned into my memory. The first is the unbelievably tragic montage to the haunting rendition of Nearer My God To Thee by the ship’s band, with the mother putting her children to sleep before the coming embrace of fate takes them away, and the old couple holding each other as the water rushes in around their bed. That latter image is probably the only film image that can consistently get me choked up, no matter how much I brace and prepare my mind for it, it always gets me. It was during this scene, that the light bulb clicked I got what Cameron captured. It was the horrible, depressing truth of it all. The fact that some of these scenarios likely played out on that ship, stories which we will never know because those who lived them took up their final residence upon the seabed of the North Atlantic a century ago.
The second scene was something that further drove this point home, but with far more haunting imagery. Back in 1998, for the first time in my life, I felt a cold, horrified chill fall over me. I had watched Scream a year before (my first “real” horror movie), but this was something that truly and completely terrified my soul: Officer Lowe deciding to go back and save people, only to realize he waited too long when he sees the corpse of a mother and her infant amidst the frozen wasteland. He then calls to the black, “Is there anyone alive out there? Can anyone hear me?” The power in this (again, something that I just realized during recent viewings) was that almost every character we see meet a tragic end was introduced to us at one point or another throughout the ship’s lifespan of the film. It was only when I realized that the woman with the baby was the same one who asked Captain Smith: “Captain, where should I go? Please?” only to get no response, that I literally jumped back as if the Reaper himself had spawned from my television. Cameron had basically planted these minor characters in your subconscious, so that when he revisited them after the wreck had claimed their bodies, you unknowingly had an emotional connection to seeing their corpses. He managed to somehow throw the despicable fact that we as humans don’t tend to truly “see” people until it’s too late right back into our faces, and haunt our very being while doing so.
However, at the very least, Cameron didn’t completely waste those initial 140 minutes. He used it in an attempt to further our emotional connection to the characters, no matter how seldom that effect might have been in the long run for some of us, it made the movie what it was for others.
Of course I can’t write about Titanic without mentioning the infamous “floating door” scene. I’ve heard some people defend this scene by stating that the reason Rose didn’t insist that Jack simply climb on top of her were the “social norms” and gender roles that were of the time period. The only problem with this logic is the fact that Rose’s character has spent the majority of the past 165 minutes attempting to buck those trends, and Jack’s entire purpose within the narrative is to further that rebellious attitude. So how can she look the man who’s been helping her embrace this and NOT once think ‘screw social conventions, this is about life and death’? It’s not like she was unaware at how frigidly cold the waters of the Atlantic were that night, she had been in there just as he was. Cameron’s explanation is that it was not a matter of space, but of buoyancy. If they had tried to balance it out, the door would’ve been pushed down enough where they both would’ve been exposed to the waters enough to the point where neither could survive. The problem with this explanation is that it leaves a remaining logical fallacy, which comes from the fact that Jack was a bit too perceptive in realizing that it would act as Cameron stated after only one attempt at getting on the door, which came from overloading the same side of the object and watching it naturally tilt over. I understand the basis of Cameron’s subtext of “women and children first” even until the end, and the duality between the men in her life, as Jack graciously gets Rose on the door and chooses to stay in the icy tomb of an ocean while we are just 20 minutes removed from watching her ex-fiancé beat people with an oar to stave them off from swamping his lifeboat. Still, the scene just doesn’t sit right with me.
"So Leo, this is where you're gonna die. Now, despite science telling us corpses float (like the ones all around you), all of the heterosexual men who will have to hear about how dreamy you are for the next two years are going to pull you down. It's a symbolic troll-face moment. There won't be a dry feminine eye in the house, and I will proceed to wipe my ass with Charmin Ultra culled from diamonds from here on out. Everybody good with that? No? Too bad, let's shoot it!"
I do realize now that there is a deeper subtext that had to take place with Jack’s death, and why I am now at least slightly more forgiving of the scene than I was over the past 15 years. He needed to die to further the gut punch of the fact that every one of the “forgettable people” (Jack, Fabrizo, Tommy, etc) in the film perish during the sinking, without word or legacy to carry on their memory, save for Rose. It’s not only to show Rose as someone who was not oblivious to the plight of others (as she had lived it with them, while most of her peers sat in the lifeboats built for 40 but carrying only TWELVE GODDAMN PASSENGERS! *ahem* Sorry, nerd rage moment there), but also as a commentary on the fact that they were the people we connected with. The good of these characters and the realization that they would “exist only in memory” when they passed, while the people we grew to loathe, despise, or just not care for (Cal and Rose’s mother Ruth) would pass on some frame of remembrance and historic mention simply by their position in life. I don’t think it’s as much about Rich=Bad; Poor=Good (though it’s very easy to take that away from it given how the character archetypes played out), but more of the fact that the cold truth of our world is that some of the best people will be forgotten in favor of those in more lucrative social standings.
Despite both actresses who played Rose claiming to believe different, Cameron stated, “I want people to decide for themselves whether or not Old Rose died in her sleep, or is simply dreaming.” It’s interesting that he said that because upon close examination of the final scene, 9-year-old me got chills when I realized that everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE who died the night of the sinking is present in the Grand Staircase when she reunites with Jack. Fabrizo, Tommy, and Mr. Andrews are obvious selections. As are lesser ones like Trudy (Rose’s stewardess aboard the ship) and John Jacob Astor. However, upon further viewings, there are characters in which Rose had little to no actually physical interaction with (that we saw at least) that make an appearance. Captain Smith, Officer Murdoch, Cora (the little girl Jack was originally dancing with at the lower class party he takes Rose to) and her father, and even bandleader Wallace Hartley and his troupe. All of whom we can safely assume perished on that horrific night, all of whom are present. This is primarily what leads me to come to the conclusion that Cameron’s intention was that she really did pass away that night, an old lady warm in her bed, just as Jack had envisioned for her.
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