My pretentious nature with film is probably extremely annoying to the average Joe. My angst and vitriol for the Transformers films alone is worth at least ten volumes of written dissection. I hated them, not as much as George Lucas god awful prequels to the best fantasy film trilogy ever created. I reserve a sort of otherworldly hate for Episodes 1-3, not unlike that of Hitler for the Jews (please, no hate mail...take a joke). The point is, I'm serious about what I like and what I don't. And sometimes I'm the only guy defending what I like (Waterworld anyone?). Sometimes I'm the only guy downing films I hate (Avatar). I am a polarizing critic. I'm the guy who trashes your favorite movie so well that you might end up hating it by the time I'm done. I take pride in that.
I say that to say this...I have always enjoyed and defended James Cameron's Titanic. For all its shortcomings, cheesy dialogue, actors finding their way, virtually no character development beyond the two leads..and a very underused Cathy Bates, I found the film to be on par stylistically and thematically with other bloated epics (Gone With The Wind, Ben Hur, Spartacus, Cleopatra). By bloated, I don't many any disrespect. Big stories require a grand scale, lush visions of the grandiose, dramatic lighting, etc. That's what Cameron set out to do, make a sweeping dramatic love story with the Titanic as the back ground. Don't kid yourself, because that's what the movie is.
Titanic is not a biopic about the ships maiden/final voyage. It's really just a throwback early 1900's love story, written with the same sensibility that any Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart film of yore would have been, cheesy dialogue included. Cameron was smart enough to realize that the only way you get both chicks and dudes crammed into a movie theater is to cross breed ideas. Guys want to see a movie about a ship that crashes into an iceberg and kills thousands of people. Women want to see a forbidden love story that winds up tragically unfulfilled. Cameron divided the movie up nicely, with the first and second half equally giving the opposite sexes their desired experience.
The magic was how the romantic half wound up affecting dudes. Guys suddenly found Kate Winslet reminded them of their wife or girlfriend. The script, tightly arranged, managed to pull them into this world of forbidden romance. The longer they watched this love blossom, the more they quit thinking about the big crash silently looming. They began to forget about the momentary teen idol fandom of Leo Dicaprio and started rooting for the character of Jack, who's underdog status appealed to the every mans working class nature. This movie stopped being about that damn ship.
When the time came for what they originally wanted to see, the guys in the audience suddenly didn't want it to happen. That's the sheer talent of James Cameron. Every other movie he'd ever made was a total dude movie..Terminator, Aliens, Terminator 2, True Lies, etc. He took everything he knew about the male mind and applied it to the Jack and Rose love story. Somehow, with one frozen Leo Dicaprio, Kate Winslet hoarsely weeping and that door she was floating on bobbing her up and down like a red headed buoy, James Cameron made just about every heterosexual guy in America, machismo aside, shed at least one tear. And this was not the "man tear", that solitary, epic tear reserved for Gladiator or Braveheart. This was the "why, God, why" tear, the tear/tears usually cried by a woman.
For these reasons, and the fact that I don't mind crying the "why God, why" tears (you wanna call me out, I'll kick your ass), I love the movie to death. No, its not a brilliant piece of work on any esoteric level. Yes, the dialogue is about as original as the latest nu-metal rock group. No, I don't place it in my top ten. BUT, I place it on equal footing with Gone With The Wind...making it number eighteen on my list of best movies ever made.
What can I say? It's a great movie.
How did I like the 3D version? I loved it, save for the fact that I totally forgot I was watching it in 3D very early on. It still holds up after 15 YEARS. I feel old now.
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