TITANIC: a quasi-review
Paul Hager
TITANIC
Some Reflections
by Paul Hager
For most viewers, whether or not you like James Cameron's
movie, TITANIC, depends on whether or not you like the central love
story. This is not to say that the love story is all there is to
the movie. On the contrary, TITANIC explores a variety of themes;
so many in fact that the wonder of it is that he is able to tell
his story in just three-and-a-quarter hours. The multilayered
complexity of this movie is what has drawn me back to it for repeat
viewings. In the following, I will share with the reader some of what
I have gleaned from the experience.
TITANIC as a love poem to women
Cameron loves women. He respects and admires women. I can't
think of another moviemaker, male or female, who consistently has a
strong woman as the protagonist. Cameron's women are smart and
resourceful, self-reliant and in control -- and passionate.
My first introduction Cameron's work was TERMINATOR. I had
avoided the theatrical release because I had gotten the impression
that it was just mindless violence. It was only when some friends
rented the video and recommended it to me that I finally saw it. It
was a revelation. In TERMINATOR we watch a young woman named
Sarah Conner evolve from a person who is acted upon, and not quite
with it, to a fully self-actualized woman in control of her own destiny.
That evolution is facilitated by the young soldier who is sent back in
time to be her protector. In the course TERMINATOR, the roles
slowly reverse. By the end of the movie, she is protecting him and
in the climax she has to save herself by destroying the terminator
alone and without help.
In TITANIC, the young Rose Dewitt Bukater (Kate Winslet)
follows a similar progression to that of Sarah Connor. However, in a
very real sense, Cameron is not just telling Rose's story in TITANIC.
The world of 1912 was one in which most women were free only to
have children and be the property of their husbands. On the deck
of RMS Titanic and in the freezing waters of the Atlantic after the
sinking, Rose is reborn a modern woman.
The birth process begins when Jack Dawson (Leonardo
DiCaprio) encounters Rose on the stern of Titanic in the midst of
an apparent suicide attempt. Jack dissuades her by tying his fate
to hers -- he will jump in to save her -- rather than by ordering her
not to jump. In other words, he helps her decide not to jump. The
critical moment occurs when Rose slips while climbing back onto
the deck, and Jack is holding her hand. It becomes obvious that
although Jack is strong enough to hold her, he is not strong enough
to pull her back aboard without help -- Leonardo DiCaprio is not
Arnold Schwartzeneger and this is not TERMINATOR 2 ("Come vith
me if you vant to live!"). When his first attempt to pull her on board
fails, he says to her that he won't let go but that she's going to have
to pull herself up. This establishes the pattern of their relationship in
the love story. When Rose needs help, Jack will be there -- to help
her help herself.
The love story in TITANIC is told by the old Rose (age 101) in
the "present". By having Rose tell her own story, Cameron is able to
accomplish several things. The first is that it allows him to change the
style of the movie. When the match-dissolve from the wreck of the
Titanic to the ship at the Southampton dockside takes place we have
been transported into David Lean territory. The lighting and cinematography
are distinctly un-Cameron. The dialogue, though written by Cameron, is
evocative of an older style. Even the performances of the actors are more
mannered and stagey. The idea of morphing back and forth between the
present story and the past is not only artzy techno-glitz, it serves the very
real purpose of softening the shock of the stylistic transition.
By emulating the style of a cinematic epic, Cameron is also able
to accentuate the difference between the Edwardian age and class
system of 1912, and the world of today. This also highlights Rose's
evolution into a modern woman. As the story progresses, Rose will
stand apart more and more from the other characters.
Cameron told the 1912 love story as a sort of DOCTOR
ZHIVAGO without snow because it is Rose's story and the style
conveys a sort of romanticism that has gone out of favor in modern
Hollywood. Cameron wanted women to see this movie, which is a
celebration of one woman's liberation as a fully self-actualized being.
Hence, he told the story in a style intended to appeal in a direct way
to women. This is not to suggest that Cameron is pandering -- many
men (myself included) like the romantic style. Pasternak, after all,
was a man, as was David Lean.
Finally, by having the old Rose tell the story, Cameron is able
to show the arc of a life well-lived. Rose adopted the philosophy stated
so well by Jack at dinner in the first class dining room: to live life to its
fullest and to make every day count. And even though we know that the
end of Rose's life is near -- she is 101 after all -- she still has that same
strength of character and passion for life that was awakened 84 years
before.
The Titanic as cultural icon
This may be the most ambitious aspect of the movie. The
ill-fated Titanic has become a 20th century icon. It is part of everyday
speech: "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" is the classic
statement of a niggling attention to meaningless detail in a project that
is "sinking." Cameron has his own views about the Titanic and its
iconography and he delivers them at various points in the movie.
Cameron's fascination with technology has always been in
evidence in his movies, both on-camera and in the making of the
movies themselves. In TITANIC, he makes clear that the ship was
a marvel, a brilliant technological achievement. The "Ode to the Titanic",
Cameron's title for the montage of the ship going to full speed for her run
across the Atlantic, is a paen to science and engineering and the people
who produce such wonders. From the workers in the engine room, to
the stokers, to the bridge officers, all are proud to be a part of the
Titanic's crew.
Throughout the movie, we see a lot of Thomas Andrews, the
principal designer of Titanic. He is always treated in a sympathetic way.
Engineers invariably overdesign -- perfection can never be achieved so
they build in safety factors. There was one fatal flaw in the construction
of Titanic -- one that was beyond the materials science of the day. The
steel used in the hull plating and ship structure had a high sulfur content.
This resulted in steel that was brittle, particularly at low temperatures.
On the night Titanic struck the iceberg, instead of bending the way good
modern steel would, plates shattered like glass, tearing a series of small
holes in the side of the ship that ultimately doomed her. While Andrews
could not anticipate something like this, he did design a ship with multiple
watertight compartments as well as enough lifeboats to accommodate all
of the passengers and crew in the event the unthinkable occurred.
Andrews was overruled by corporate bureaucrats in the White Star Line
who felt that too many lifeboats "cluttered the deck" and the seeds of the
human disaster were sown.
Pushing technology is good, according to Cameron (I happen
to agree). This is in marked contrast to the neo-Luddite rant delivered
by Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in JURASSIC PARK. In Cameron's
world, the problem is not science or technology, it is the foolish
deference to the imagined needs of bureaucrats and institutions that
are out of touch with the real world. (In is instructive to note that the
explosion of the space shuttle Challenger involved a design defect that
was temperature dependent and engineers being overruled by bureaucrats.)
There is hubris, but the source is not of the technological variety,
it is the upper class twits -- the "masters of the universe" -- who have lost
touch with the real world. These twits run the most magnificent
technological creation of the age, the Titanic, into an iceberg and sink it --
in two years they will do essentially the same thing to European
civilization which will bleed to death in Flanders, the Somme, and Verdun.
As on the Titanic, most of the victims of World War I will be the lower
class, but the class system itself will die as well.
Although Caledon Hockley (Billy Zane) is American, as are
a number of the real upper class passengers on the Titanic (such as
John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Gugenheim), it's clear that Cameron
sees the antidote to the class system as being American egalitarianism.
Cameron doesn't equate class with money -- Molly "the unsinkable"
Brown is wealthy but rejects upper class pretensions. American
egalitarianism, as practiced by Brown, and celebrated by Cameron, is
that people have the right to try to better themselves. The evil of the
class system is that it presumes that there is a better sort of person
that should be in control and it actively thwarts the aspirations of those
who are low in the pecking order. The immigrants in steerage are
coming to American to get away from the stifling European class
system and to try to live the American Dream. Cameron clearly
romanticizes this group -- perhaps the fact that Cameron himself is
an immigrant from Canada bears on this somewhat.
Cameron does touch on the institutional component of the
disaster. The institutional culture of the crew upper echelon, from the
Captain on down, produced a series of misjudgments that had the
cumulative effect of running Titanic into an iceberg. Although I personally
see this as being one of the most important lessons to be learned from
the Titanic disaster, I can't fault Cameron for giving it less emphasis.
He is, after all, giving us his view of the iconography.
Then there is the forensic component -- the application of
science to tell us what "really" happened. In a short but very effective
scene, the salvage expedition's chief technical wiz provides a computer
show of the Titanic's collision and sinking. The old Rose remarks at the
end of the show that it is a fine piece of forensics but the actual
experience was somewhat different. Science can tell us that "anything
made of iron will sink" and it can give us a pretty good idea of how long
a human can survive immersed in 28 degree fahrenheit seawater.
However, life and death are experienced individually.
Ultimately, the sinking of Titanic is a human tragedy, experienced
by 2200+ people. Although the story is Rose's, we do get to see many of
the human stories through her eyes. Cameron contrives to have Rose
pass through much of the ship during the sinking and thus show us some
of the untold stories -- the stories of the 1500 who perished. While A
NIGHT TO REMEMBER is a fine piece of history, it necessarily has to
limit itself to what the survivors experienced -- Cameron's way of telling
the story, through Rose's eyes, doesn't face this limitation.
Finally, there the wreck itself -- the most powerful icon of all.
Technology has allowed us to visit Titanic's grave and Cameron takes
us there. Much of what we see on the screen is the actual wreck
(augmented in places by models), and the Keldysh, submersibles, and
remote operated vehicle (ROV) are all real. Artifacts take on a mystique
-- it is as though history accretes to them in some fashion. By coming
close to the artifact, we come close to the world that produced it.
Cameron shows impeccable artistic judgement by stepping back and
letting the wreck tell its own story.
The elderly as a resource, and the art of storytelling.
Surprisingly, no commentator has reflected on old Rose and
her relationship with the salvage crew on the Keldysh in terms of our
societal views of the aged. When Rose first appears, it is clear that
she is being patronized to a greater or lesser degree by almost everyone.
When she finally begins her story, she is briefly interrupted by Lovett (Bill
Paxton), the expedition's head, who thinks her memory is faltering. What
is actually happening -- as we soon become aware -- is that she is
launching into a story. Now, for the first -- and probably last -- time she
will tell it.
In my own experience, I've been privileged to have a number
of elderly people share their experiences with me. My wife's maternal
grandfather, who passed away only a few years ago, told me what it was
like to be a teenaged boy in Poland during World War I. He first had to
avoid being forcibly drafted into the Russian army and later into the
German army. There was also the grandfather of an ex-girlfriend (from
the early 1970s) who related his World War I experience on a merchant
ship in Istanbul harbor when the Emden and Goeben steamed in.
In our society, we waste the value information that is locked in
the brains of the aged. Other societies have venerated their elderly, and
TITANIC is suggesting that we should emulate them.
Rose begins her story with, "It was 84 years ago..." and is
then interrupted by Lovett, who says for her to just try and remember
what she can. The interruption makes explicit that Lovett and the others
think she is a bit senile. Her response is to take control by saying that
she is going to tell the story her way. She then repeats, word-for-word,
the beginning. It is clear that from this that the story is almost a
recitation. By the time we morph out of the story the first time (when
Rose and Jack kiss on the bow of Titanic), Lovett and the others have
become fully absorbed by Rose's narrative and she has ceased to be
someone to be condescended to.
Cameron's choice to make Rose an actress allows him to say
something about movies as vehicles for story telling in parallel with the
idea of the story as our most ancient art form. For most of human
existance, wisdom has been passed from generation to generation orally.
TITANIC is a movie, of course. The movie we see on the screen is the
"movie" that ex-movie actress Rose has constructed in her mind -- a
conceit that is particularly useful for Cameron's own story. Rose's
narration and her detailed observations make it altogether believable
that she weaves into her personal story what she has learned from the
"real history" of the disaster. Once we accept this, Cameron is free to
shift POV to tell his/Rose's story.
Cameron's roving camera moves along the deck of the Titanic
as passengers scramble ahead of the advancing waters. It also takes
up a vantage from something like 10,000 feet up and 2 or 3 miles away,
showing how small the giant ship is in the immensity of the North
Atlantic. Cameron alternately distances us from the action on deck
and then puts us with Rose and Jack, right in the middle of it. Some
of the most effective scenes are when Rose makes eye contact with her
neighbors on the stern. Cinematically, Cameron is restating Stephen
Crane or Jack London on the implacable nature of the physical universe,
even to the cold light from the stars overhead that take no notice of the
people freezing in the Atlantic. At the same time, we are drawn into the
experience because Rose brings us along with her.
Cameron's view of art
It is no accident that art plays a role in TITANIC. The young Rose
appreciates art and is apparently ahead of the cultural curve in that the
"cheap" works she has had Cal buy for her include Picasso, Degas, and
Monet. Art also figures in bringing Rose and Jack closer together. She
sees a quality in Jack's sketches -- an ability to capture the human
condition. Jack himself seems to be a young Jim Cameron, transported
in time to 1912. The fact that all of Jack's sketches were done by Cameron
is certainly suggestive. We can only speculate whether or not Jack
would have made it as a painter in an alternate universe where Titanic
doesn't sink. Perhaps Cameron is hinting that Jack might well have found
himself in the great artistic medium of the 20th century, and become a
successful filmmaker.
There are a number of interesting statements in the movie regarding
art and commercialism. Jack has been unable to make a living as an artist,
though he does have ability. Picasso, et al., will become immensely
successful commercially. Cal Hockley sardonically states that it is
unfortunate he left the sketch Jack did of Rose in the stateroom because
it will become valuable in the morning -- this is Cal's way of saying that
Jack will be dead, and, as we all know, artists often only come into their
own posthumously. There is a tension in art, says Cameron, between
an artist's need to be faithful to his/her vision, and the need to appeal to
enough of an audience to put food in one's belly. A second area of
tension is the balance an artist must strike between the subjective and
objective. When Jack does the nude sketch of Rose, there are two ways
of viewing the action. The first is the straightforward romantic view.
However, Cameron is also giving us an explicit view of that subjective-
objective dichotomy. We see Jack's eyes in extreme closeup looking
over the tablet at Rose. They betray the emotion he feels. At the same
time, we see Jack's hands doing the drawing. They are steady, and
every line is drawn with assurance and authority.
The scene where Jack sketches Rose raises some interesting
questions. It is pretty clear that the hands doing the drawing are more
mature than Jack's. That is because in reality the hands belong to Jim
Cameron. Why did Cameron do the drawing? Why not have a young
male artist do the drawing? Then the hands would more nearly match.
One answer might be that Cameron was on an ego trip. That seems far
too facile. Another possibility is that Cameron really does see Jack as
somewhat of an alter-ego, and this may well be part of what is going on.
However, I think the best explanation is that Cameron wanted to
accentuate the maturity of Jack as an artist and this provided visual
emphasis.
Concluding thoughts
I've only peeled away a few layers of the onion in my comments
about TITANIC. Much remains that could be said. For now, this will suffice.
I trust first time viewers will find my comments of use. For others, I hope
this will provoke further discussion. The joy of TITANIC is that it is so
richly textured that repeat viewings reward one with more insights. Cameron
has created his opus.
--
paul hager hag...@cs.indiana.edu
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason."
-- Thomas Paine, THE AGE OF REASON
Gary Pollard
eadily admit that I've taken the easy way out by dropping
components on the form at design time. However, you can create
components at runtime,
position them as you wish, then set up event handlers quite easily. It
just takes a bit more work.
<END>
Hope that helps!
Rkr
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