Titanic - Hi, I'm Tit Whistle, and I'm here to defend Titanic. This movie gets a bad rap for being too shallow, too popular, and too icky-girlish. I agree that the story is rather pedestrian, but it works well enough to get you to the ship's sinking, when it takes off and becomes a masterwork of escalating tension and action. Early on, the dialog is really awkward and even Kate Winslet can't do shit with it. It's not a deal breaker, however. Yes, these are conventional characters in a standard setting of class differences, but things improve steadily and you get past it to the point that you have heroes to root for and villains to hate. It may be reinventing the wheel, but it works, and all we need is for it to work so the climactic scenes actually have some emotional gravity. If you disagree, try watching something like Pearl Harbor, which tried to do the same thing but failed since the characters were such yutzes. So the story is good enough, but the real attraction is the sinking of the ship, which as I said before is masterful. I'm still amazed how Cameron builds the gradually builds tension from the moment the ship hits the iceberg until it finally completely sinks into the ocean. This is about 90 minutes of film in which the passengers move from casually inconvenienced to concerned to worried to fucking panicked. Never does it feel like it is rushing to show you something really cool. It makes you feel like you're on the boat and your fear is gradually increasing along with the doomed passengers. I've seen this movie plenty of times and the ship sinking still gets me all verklempt, and that's because the movie earns it. Also great is the scene afterward when they're clinging to each other among the driftwood. Again, the movie earns this moment by being good enough and getting us emotionally involved. We've been through a nightmare with these people that felt completely real. Now they're saying goodbye and we can take a moment to catch our breath, but we don't because we're still right there with them freezing in the water and hoping they turn out okay. So yeah, it's got clumsy dialog and standard cliches, but it overcomes those problems with great direction and pacing. For once, the screaming teenage girls were right.
Twist: I watched a recorded version of this on ABC Family. It wasn't edited much but it did eliminate sweet Kate's boobies and a couple of swear words. Worst is I had to fast forward through commercials. This was a 4 1/2 hour recording of a 3 hour 15 minute movie, so that's a lot of commercials. It also takes away some of the impact of the movie, like when the ship finally goes under and there's the wide shot of the hundreds of flailing and screaming soon-to-be-deads, someone had the dick idea that that's a good time for an ad for Mars Needs Moms. Kinda takes you out of the moment. I would like to thank Diello for offering me his DVD copy on loan. I would've preferred an uncut version, but I needed to get this one out of the way. Props to you anyway, bro.
Did it deserve to win?: L.A. Confidential was the best movie of the year. It had no flaws, while Titanic had some. Boogie Nights is a close second, and there are others which I think were better than Titanic, but I at least think Titanic is an acceptable winner since it's rewatchable and showed us so much we hadn't seen before.
(out of 5)
Up next: Shakespeare in Love