ABSTRACT: While this movie has fictional elements to it, it gives a very graphic depiction of the sinking of the Titanic
CONTENT:
(©Feb 25, 2009~Also appeared at Ciao under my pen-name of pyewacket)
I have to confess, I hadn't watched this movie in quite awhile, but then something prompted me to watch it again. Perhaps it was due to the fact, that one of the nominees for the recent Academy Awards was Kate Winslet who played Rose Dawson in this Titanic movie. I had truly forgotten just how spectacular this movie was and ever so enjoyed watching it all over again. This movie is epic in every sense and won a whole host of Oscars, including Best Picture, and it was a well deserved win.
Historical Background For The Movie
As everyone knows, Titanic was an actual ship, a ship that was supposedly designed and built to be unsinkable, and made its maiden voyage across the Atlantic in April of 1912, however, en route the ship hit an iceberg on April 14th and in only less than three hours completely sank. Since the ship had been deemed unsinkable, the ship's builders for the White Star line of whom the Titanic was owned felt that there was no need to have enough survival ships should the worse happen, and due to this, over 1,500 people, mainly the poorer class members of steerage were drowned, however, some of the richer class members were to perish as well, including some notables such as millionaires, John Astor, and Benjamin Guggenheim.
Plot
The movie Titanic begins with a treasure hunter, Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton), who is not only obsessed with finding Titanic, but whose main hope is to find the fabled Heart of the Ocean necklace that costs millions and believed to have been one of the many valuable treasures that sunk beneath the waters when Titanic sunk on that fateful night. After much underwater searching via mechanical underwater type robots, he and his crew are lucky to find the safe that supposedly holds the diamond, but when it is retrieved from the ocean, opened and searched it's not there. The only thing inside are water-logged stacks of money and a drawing. A drawing of a nude woman lying on a couch wearing the exact same diamond he is searching for. By strange chance of fate, as the TV news is relating the find, and showing the drawing, it captures the attention of a quite elderly woman...the woman turns out to be the older version of one of the main characters of this movie and was one of the survivors of the Titanic disaster....Her name now is known as Rose Dawson and she manages to get in contact with Brock Paxton on board his ship, and he asks her, if she knew who the woman in the drawing was, and she answers him "Why it's me." Interested Brock makes arrangements for Rose and her grand-daughter to come on board his ship, so she can relate the story and the events that took place on Titanic.
As a young woman she was known as, Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), a young woman of upper class and is the finance of Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), a smug arrogant rich man of whom Rose doesn't really love, but is pressured by her mother to marry to keep the "good" name of Bukater in the upper social ring. Rose's character is somewhat near kin to a liberated woman. She hates the whole phoniness and pretense of high society. So distraught, one night she races out from the dining hall and to the stern of the ship with the intention of hurling herself overboard. She is stopped by Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a poor member from the steerage deck who convinces her that killing herself is not the answer to her problems.
The next day, Rose "formally" wishes to thank Jack, but while talking finds his manners rather brass and crude, in anger she grabs a drawing pad that Jack is carrying and she starts examining the pencil drawings he has done and finds them to be exquisitely done, as she has a love for art herself. She is now rather intrigued by Jack and wants to learn more about his rather vagabond travels, and as you can surmise, she begins to become attracted to Jack and finds his candor, and honesty a fresh breath of life as opposed to the stuffy, self-centered world that her rich fiancé belongs to.
Do Jack and Rose fall in love? Does Jack or Rose survive the sinking of Titanic? What happens to Cal? Rose's mother? What really happened to that necklace, the Heart of the Ocean? For this you'll have to see the movie as I won't get away any further details of the movie and you'll just have to see it yourself.
Opinions And Thoughts
This is movie making at it's greatest, a real genuine epic. There actually have been underwater hunts to find the remains of the Titanic, and the movie-set version of the ship was painstakingly recreated to exacting detail from original drawings of the ship. Every time I see the "movie-set" version of the ship and how it must have looked like I can't help thinking to myself, they sure don't build luxury liners as beautiful as this anymore.
While the movie does mainly center around a fictional love story, it's director, John Cameron, also depicts the rather grim reality of the actual sinking of the ship, the horror of people trying to save themselves from being drowned to death, and of the reality of how many lives were lost on that fateful day.
Cameron is great in depicting the "mood" for the movie, and by that I mean how important the class system of society was of the time, from the rather snooty, snobby viewpoint of the upper class toward anyone of the lower classes that were treated as less than human. Cameron also gives a true sense of the elegance of the upper decks reserved only for the rich, such as the exquisite dining room, and thanks to painstaking research, gives brilliant detail of replicas of even something as simple as the tablecloths, dinnerware, flatware used for the actual ship. He shows the beauty and the grandeur of the master suites for the rich which even includes fireplaces in each room. Then he is brilliant in showing the opposite, that is, the bleakness of the steerage decks where the sleeping quarters are claustrophobically small and cramped and are rat infested.
If I were to rate this movie it would be a 10+++++
Do I love this movie? In one word. YES.
This is movie making at it's glorious best and a not to be missed movie. The soundtrack is composed by one of my favorites, that is James Horner, famous for the soundtracks of Glory, and Braveheart and many more
Rose DeWitt Bukater.....Kate Winslet
Jack Dawson..................Leonardo DiCaprio
Cal Hockley....................Billy Zane
Ruth DeWitt Bukater.....Frances Fisher
Old Rose..........................Gloria Stuart
Captain Smith.................Bernard Hill
(and many more!)
Directed by James Cameron
Written by James Cameron
Music by James Horner
Running Time: 195 minutes
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