Titanic

Cafe Society
21

Preach it, SISTAH!

The dialogue was, without a doubt, (Battlefield: Earth excluded) some of the worst ever forced on a movie-going crowd. Unfortunately, you had to also contend with the two stars acting as wooden as possible. When they were having sex in that car (which is a spoiler, by the way, just in case you don’t have that hand-on-a-window-oh-my-God-he’s-killing-her-too-bad-she-can’t-get-him-at-the-same-time impression burned at the back of your brain box), I thought, “Huh. So that’s what trees look like having sex. No wonder National Geographic never shows this.”

So, was it horrible of me to be rooting for Billy Zane? I’m glad he survived. (Just as long as he never does another Phantom movie. Then yeah, put him back on the boat and sink the fucker.)

22

The level of vitriol aimed at it is, it’s true, down to it’s vast success (and beating the terrific LA Confidential). But no matter how much it made it was always a poor film - not dreadful, just poor. It was just a remake of A Night To Remember with bad acting and a tacked on love story.

And yes, I am one of those people who likes dark, edgy, well-written films. I also like light, romantic, well-written films.

It did look good though.

23

The movie doesn’t really fit on a two-position sucks/rocks scale; technically it was brilliant, but as a human story it was weak. As others have stated, there were lots of true stories aboard ship that would have been more interesting than the hackneyed poor boy - rich girl tripe.

The movie did a great job of showing what a huge, magnificent vessel the ship was, and also how isolated (a high overhead shot of the liner at night, its bright portholes the only light in a huge, dark ocean, literally gave me chills). And the sinking was amazing.

But somehow Cameron didn’t think the huge tragedy was dramatic enough. It’s not enough that our annoying young lovers are aboard the most famous sinking ship in history – no, they have to suffer a false accusation, endless wading through frigid water belowdecks, and then being chased and shot at by the completely superfluous “villain”. Typical excess.

My favorite scenes didn’t involve randy little Rose and Leo, but were about either real people or believable situations – the mother silently holding her two children on the bunk as the water rises in their cabin; the ship’s designer making a small adjustment to the clock in the main salon as the ship is noticeably tilting towards the bow. It didn’t even bother me that Cameron used the cinematic chestnut of the band playing “Nearer My God to Thee”, which they probably didn’t – the beautiful, sad melody worked perfectly for that scene.

(Incidentally, they did not lock the steerage passengers in, nor was the Captain trying to set a speed record.)

Cameron has a great visual sense, but little imagination when it comes to characters. (Who thought it was a good idea to have an upper-class, educated young woman in 1912 give her despicable fiance the finger, for Christ’s sake, instead of saying something pithy that would have put him in his place?)

The sets and costumes were near-perfect. (Sadly, some of the costumes were actual vintage pieces and were ruined by water for the sake of making a movie; a lot of costumers are not happy about that aspect.)

So I’d give the movie two and a half stars. If it had had a really good script, and a more subtle director (maybe with Cameron in charge of the second unit), it could have been great.

24

My understanding from reading Titanic books is that despite some debate, it has been decided that certain steerage class areas were locked, and in the panic and confusion, were never opened.

Sparks Titanic FAQ’s, Encyclopedia Titanica and Titanic Revisited support this. I’m sure I have support somewhere in my pile of books, but I haven’t got the patience to sort through them right now. I’ve been reading about the Titanic for nearly 24 years, so the collection is on the hefty side.

25

Turek

It’s great to see admissions because a family has lots of kids at reduced admissions which lowers the boxoffice figure.

But…

I wonder how accurate the numbers are, especially on the older films.

26

[Hijack]

It seems to me that to compare Titanic to Gone With the Wind (or any other film from a different era), you have to take into account not only inflation, but the fact that the population of the U.S. has more than doubled sinceGWTW came out. Adjust for the price of the average ticket, and then figure out how many bodies the flick actually put in the seats as related to how many potential moviegoers were in the country (world) at the time. Then again, you’d also need to adjust for what the ticket price was in real dollars, since my impression is that $8 today is a bit more than a nickel was in 1915 or so. But I’m not sure and don’t feel like researching right now.

[/Hijack; sorry]

27

Actually, $8.00 in 1997, the year Titanic was released, would be the equivalent of $0.51 in 1915. But ticket inflation has strayed from the general consumer price index.