One of the true juggernauts in cinema history closed the deal by being named the year’s best picture after it had already been crowned the all-time box office champion. In late 1997 and early 1998, Titanic became a cultural phenomenon, the likes of which had rarely been seen. Not only did the movie make more money at the box office than any film before it, it also made household names out of its stars and director, spawned an Oscar winning and Grammy winning number one hit song, and claimed a large wedge in the vernacular of popular culture.

The actual story of the R.M.S. Titanic is one that piqued people’s interest for decades. Deemed to be unsinkable, she struck an iceberg and sunk on her maiden voyage, taking more than 1,500 people with her to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. For the next 74 years, no one knew the final resting place of the ship. The water was deep and cold and the legend of the ship often found its way into popular culture, be it in books, television or cinema. The sinking of the Titanic was one of the stories that those of us of a certain age grew up with, and the legend behind the ship and her sinking haunted dreams for decades.

A few years after the wreck was found, Writer/Director/Producer James Cameron embarked on the, ahem, titanic task of bringing the story to the screen. Instead of doing a strict historical story, he wrote in a love story between well-to-do and betrothed 19-year old socialite Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) and Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a young man of a more meager upbringing and background who is a struggling artists currently living as a drifter. With that in mind, the actual story of the Titanic serves as a backdrop to this love story, particularly over the first half of the film.

James Cameron had made a name for himself in the late 80’s and early 90’s by directing such science-fiction and adventure classics like Aliens, The Terminator, T2: Judgment Day, The Abyss, and True Lies. Through these films, Cameron established himself as one of the top directors of action films however he hadn’t done much to spread his wings into more dramatic material. Titanic would present him with that opportunity, and he would fight two studios and suffer a ton of bad press over the increasing budgets and expanding schedules in order to complete the film and see this opportunity through to the end.

To me Titanic is two separate films, each roughly an hour and a half long. Each film also demonstrates James Cameron’s strengths and weaknesses as a director. The first film is a romantic drama between these somewhat star-crossed lovers from opposite sides of the socio-economic tracks. There are some moments of wit and charm during this segment of the film, but I have always found it to be border line unwatchable. There are two things that frustrate me the most about the first half of Titanic. The first is the performances of both DiCaprio and Winslet. They were both in their early 20’s when this film came out, and were two of the most promising young actors at that time. Indeed, time has borne that promise out as they’ve each enjoyed stellar careers in the ensuing 18 years since Titanic’s release. What’s more is that the films they had starred in previous to Titanic like Sense and Sensibility for Winslet and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Romeo + Juliet and The Basketball Diaries for DiCaprio showed each to be fine actors. However, those acting skills are not apparent in Titanic. I’ve seen a lot of films with each of these actors, and I can’t think of a film for either of them in which their performances are as weak as they are in this film. I put that on Cameron, because as great as he is at directing action, he’s not nearly as strong at directing drama, and he was not able to pull even marginally convincing performances out of DiCaprio or Winslet.

The other frustrating thing about the first half of Titanic is the script, penned by Cameron. Structurally the script is sound. It hits all of the right beats and the drama builds well as the story progresses. The script loses me with its dialogue and in its details. For instance, the love story that drives the entire narrative feels very contrived. I understand that Rose has a free spirit that is being repressed by her mother (Frances Fisher) and her fiancé, Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), and that Jack allows for that free spirit to be released, so in that regard the love story works. The problem is that the drama is just vanilla and superficial. Even my teenage daughter referred to the first half of Titanic as “fluff”, and she’s right. The script really goes after lowest common denominator themes like class envy and the fun-loving rogue (Jack) vs. the uptight socialite (Cal). There is no depth to this story in the least. All of the characters are paint-by-number caricatures.

In a past blog I mentioned a screenwriting instructor who said that when you’re developing your characters make sure that you give your hero at least one fault, or negative character trait and that you give your villain at least one positive character trait. This is how you add depth. For if your hero is infallible and your villain is completely inhuman, your audience won’t be able to relate to them at all and they’ll just be flat characters. That’s what we have in Titanic, as Jack is a hero with no visible faults, no weaknesses that he has to overcome, other than his lack of money, but Cameron portrays that as a positive anyway. In Cal, we have the same problem on the opposite side of the coin. He’s just a jerk through and through and has no good qualities whatsoever. Cameron does make a point of showing us that Rose is essentially being forced to marry him by her mother because her father left them in debt, and with only their good name to essentially sell. That leaves Rose feeling trapped and gives us the ensuing incident of Jack preventing her from jumping off of the back of the ship on the first night of the voyage. But again, the main problem is that both Jack and Cal are flat characters. Jack is completely heroic and Cal is completely villainous. Neither one works as a character.

I mentioned this briefly a moment ago, but I would also like to expand on it with a little more detail because I believe that the lack of a strong theme adds to the shallowness of the film and shows the need for having characters with depth. The theme of a film is quite often the lesson or message of the story. What is Titanic trying to say? There is a certain element of man vs. nature, and man’s arrogance coming back to bite him in the end, but it’s thinly veiled through the guise of class envy and class warfare in the film. As a writer and a director Cameron was going for out basest emotional responses, and he didn’t only do that with the theme of the story. He made a point of showing children suffering and crying. One of the most famous shots is of the mother telling her young children a bedtime story as the boat is sinking, and another mother telling her young child that it will all be over soon as the ship is about to make its final plunge. We see other scenes with crying children, but it doesn’t work. I hate to say this, but simply showing scared children is lazy storytelling. Yes, it gets a visceral emotional reaction, but it that’s the easy way out. When you rely on that, it means that you haven’t taken the time to allow the audience to get to know the characters and to get to care about them. You’re just figuring that everyone hates seeing harmful things happen to children, and that’s where you get your drama.

However, once the ship hits the iceberg and starts to sink, we begin the second version of Titanic, and her Cameron is in his element, and the film jumps several notches on the entertainment value scale. The second half of the film does suffer slightly due to the incomplete characters and story development of the first half, but Cameron did an excellent job of pacing the action in a way that it the tension and action built slowly as the ship starts to sink and the characters slowly learn the gravity of their collective predicament. As the ship slips more and more beneath the surface of the ocean the pacing of the action, editing and storytelling gets more intense and frenetic as water steadily fills the ship. Finally, as the ship violently breaks apart during its last moments above the surface, the action reaches its crescendo before we have the denouement of Rose, having been rescued, avoids being seen by Cal and discovering the priceless diamond that he had given her.

All of the above action is happening parallel to Rose and Jack attempting to find some way to escape what looks like certain death. Despite the lack of character development, we do root for them to survive, even though we already know that only Rose does due to circumstances from earlier in the film, and it is exciting to watch them escape every precarious situation they’re in until at last the ship sinks, and Rose is able to climb on to a floating piece of wood as Jack tries to keep her confidence up that life boats will soon be arriving. In his last moments, he implores Rose to live a great life and a long life, and to not let anyone else tell her how to live it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that all of the action on the Titanic takes place through flashback. The film starts with a team of grave robbers, er, salvagers led by Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) who are using submarines to search the wreckage of the Titanic for the Heart of the Ocean diamond. Thinking that they’ve found the safe that contains it, they haul it up and open it on board their vessel, but the diamond is not there. What they do find, however, is a sketch of Rose that we will later see Jack draw, and Rose is nude except for the diamond necklace. Now 100 years old, Rose sees the story on the TV news, and she and her grand-daughter fly to the Lovett’s vessel where she regales him and his crew of the fateful voyage. Gloria Stuart played Old Rose, and was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her work on this film, and she did steal a couple of scenes that turned out to be some of the most memorable scenes in the film.

One other thing that should be discussed regarding this film is its use of visual effects and how Art Directors Martin Laing and Charles Dwight Lee along with Production Designer Peter Lamont meticulously recreated the interiors and exteriors of the ship whether through reconstruction or CG. Titanic actually took computer generated visual effects to another level and the look of the film undoubtedly assisted in its popularity. Watching it the other night, I must say that the visuals do not hold up to today’s standards. It still looks good, but it doesn’t look nearly as realistic as it did in 1997.

Overall, Titanic was a cultural phenomenon. I used the word juggernaut earlier, and that’s really what it was. It was a juggernaut that rolled over box office records and rolled through the Oscars. In many ways, it was a once-in-a-lifetime cinematic phenomenon that brought more people to the movie theater than had been there in years. For that, Titanic should be applauded.

Did the Academy get it right?

I was talking to a friend of mine who made a good point about this. He said that Best Picture is essentially a production award, and when you look at it in that context then yes, the Academy did get it right in 1997. Getting Titanic produced required a Herculean effort on the part of James Cameron and the other people who produced the film. They raised the standard of visual effects and created a production the size and scope of which hadn’t been seen before. On top of all of that, they produced what has to at least be considered a film which is a very fine one indeed. However, it was not the best film of the year, so I am going to say that no, the Academy did not get it right for 1997. Of the four other films that were nominated that year, I would have voted for three of them ahead of Titanic. As Good As It Gets, Good Will Hunting and L.A. Confidential were all better films than Titanic. They all had much more compelling stories, better written screenplays, more developed characters, and better acting. I could spend another 2,000 words espousing the virtues of those other films, but the fact of the matter is that the times quite often dictate the national mood, and the national mood in 1997 was extremely pro-Titanic. It’s easy for me to sit here 18 years later and say that the Academy got this one wrong when I can actually remember how monumental of an event this film’s release was. Although even back then, I was rooting for Good Will Hunting, and now I consider L.A. Confidential to be the film that should have won. Either way, I can’t blame the Academy for selecting Titanic as Best Picture of 1997, but I will never believe that it was the year’s best film.