Rapid Review: Titanic (1997)

“God himself could not sink this ship.”
– Cal Hockley

SYNOPSIS: A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind, but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic. – via IMDB

So I watched this on the way back from Italy, first time I have seen it in years. I still enjoyed it, and there were so many more aspects that I appreciated in the film seeing it now that I am older. The story of the Titanic always fascinated me, and even now, all these years later, it’s still immensely interesting. Now, back to the film, obviously I was on board with this because DiCaprio. I started a ridiculous obsession with him when this came out (I was still a rugrat when it hit, but come on, Jack Dawson). It was also where I became a fan of Kate Winslet, whatever she may think of her performance here. I loved this dramatic romantic film growing up, and it is still a good film. Watching it I realised that, as much as it was the love story between Jack and Rose, there was still the love story of the Titanic, so to speak (or love letter to the ship and her passengers, whichever way you wish to see it). So much time was spent showing us the destruction of the ship, the way she went down, fell apart, the whole katoot, and there were chunks of time that lapsed that did not feature Jack and Rose, and that was okay. Titanic features some solid performances, most notably (obviously) from DiCaprio and Winslet, but also Kathy Bates, Bernard Hill, and Victor Garber, among others. Titanic also spent a lot of time differentiating between the classes, which was not easy to watch, especially when it gets to locking second and third class passengers downstairs so that they could evacuate the first class passengers first, and how the first class passengers didn’t want to mix with lower classes. It made me sick to watch, and though times have changed, classism is still a major issue the world over. It is evident that Cameron was incredibly vested in his project, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching this again. Gosh, I will never forget the popularity of this film when it came out – and that is saying something, when a kid takes in how ridiculously huge a movie is. To this day, it is so immensely popular. Look, there are flaws with the film, for sure, but for the most part, it’s a pretty damn good movie, no matter how super hyped up it is. It is funny, sweet, sad, heart-wrenching, will make you angry, and will definitely keep you entertained from the off.

I will now, of course, take a moment, purely to appreciate DiCaprio for… all sorts of reasons.