Pizza & a Movie #54: "Titanic" Part 2
Get wrecked with "Titanic"!
“Titanic” Tape 2
1997 • PG-13 • 1h 26mins (tape 2) • Rent it • Watch trailer
🎟️✌️Double Feature: Pairing up Titanic with, wait, also Titanic?
Like Titanic itself, this review comes in two parts. We’re on a Valentine’s Day rewatch of Titanic (which is back in theaters!), a two-parter with itself. Why? Because the VHS version was two cassette tapes. Last week we watched tape one.
As we pop in tape two, things aren’t going well for anyone. Here’s the plot. Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) is handcuffed to a pipe on the lowest deck, framed for stealing the Heart of the Ocean from Cal (Billy Zane), who knows by now that Rose (Kate Winslet) just isn’t that into him. Cal’s hiding the necklace in his coat along with his moral compass. Instead of hopping on a lifeboat with her mom (Frances Fisher), Rose heads below to find missing Jack. Handcuffs are no match for true love (and an axe). But the water’s rising. Getting back to the top deck increases in difficulty every minute, and everybody’s getting desperate.
Topside, in an “if at first you don’t succeed…” moment, both Jack and Cal together try to get Rose on a lifeboat this time. It still doesn’t take. As Rose and Jack part ways with Cal, he realizes ruefully he put his coat—with the valuable necklace in the pocket—on Rose. Oops. Cal takes this loss in stride, grabbing a loose child and posing as their father to get aboard a lifeboat. Just a really good guy, Cal, love him. For Rose and Jack, no lifeboats remain. Titanic enters its endgame, angling skyward as its bow sinks. Our soggy lovebirds cling to the railing until Titanic sinks, then it’s into the drink. Rose grabs a wood thing—door? panelling? plot device?—but this salvation only seats one. Jack becomes a Jacksicle, but Rose gets herself aboard a passing lifeboat doing a lap for survivors.
Back in the present, the human connection Old Rose’s (Gloria Stuart) story gave Lovett (Bill Paxton) makes him hang up his treasure hunt for the Heart of the Ocean. That night, Rose takes in the Atlantic air from the bow of the Keldysh. She returns the necklace—in her possession all along—to the depths, watching it sink. Back asleep in her bed, she dreams of being young, back on Titanic, meeting Jack again, surrounded by fellow travelers. She’d lived a full life of her own. Her heart, it seems, did indeed go on.
We end on ambiguity. Does Old Rose dream the reunion? Does she dream dropping the Heart of the Ocean too? Cameron recut this scene a few times, resulting in the dreamlike quality of the final version. Winslet says Rose died in her sleep. It’s the afterlife we’re seeing, where she joins Jack again. Cameron refuses to settle it. Says audiences need to arrive at their emotional truth on their own. He’s a slippery one, that James Cameron.
Speaking of Cameron, I don’t want to oversell it, but the guy wrote a perfect movie. Not the dialogue—oh boy, you know I don’t mean dialogue. I mean the structure of the thing itself. We get a history lesson at the beginning before he builds class conflict and romantic tension, somehow finding time to define the stakes of the voyage, explain how rudders and boilers work, and clarify why the weather that night matters. Cameron sets up every domino before the chain reaction of their fall. Can Rose and Jack’s romance work? We know: No. Will the ship make it? Of course not. In falling, will this seafaring Tower of Babel crush a boatload of overinflated egos? Yes. The chills don’t come from not knowing what will happen. Cameron made sure he spoiled the ending in the first act. No, they come from watching a deft hand overturn a meticulously set table.
In tape two, all the dominoes fall. After the iceberg hits, it’s uh-oh after uh-oh. First, front lower compartments fill. Water spills over bulkheads that don’t reach high enough to seal off the next compartment. Then the upper decks saturate. Meanwhile, the upper crust in their staterooms ignore the problem because they don’t see it (as they’ve presumably behaved with every previous problem they encountered). The wet-footed unfortunates stuck below with a rising water level can’t do a thing about it.
Three accelerants make it worse. How few lifeboats there are to go around. How everyone says “pshaw!” to lifejackets. How quickly Titanic goes down—“An hour, two at most”. There’s too little time, too many minds to change, too few ways to escape. And, at every turn, Cameron spent the time to ensure we know exactly why. In contrast to fare like Scream, Titanic is a horror of realism. I suppose you’d call that a tragedy.
But in this second half, it’s not just water filling the boat. Themes flood in too. Rose saves Jack, yes. But more importantly saves herself from a life she didn’t want. If new money Unsinkable Molly Brown can pull herself up by her bootstraps, surely Rose can pull together a new life too. Her mother pushes Rose to trade the most power Rose will ever have in her conventional life—choosing a suitor—to save the family’s financial bacon.
Jack, with no dough, projects a vagabond nobility that might just be #grustle, who knows. The behemoth’s builder, Thomas Andrews, is a decent dude overrun by a really, really bad client. That client, White Star Line, represents capitalism's systemic bent toward scale over all else. The hubris of thinking that if you can do it, you should do it. It's Manifest Destiny but with 2,200 lives at stake. Titanic makes sure we know the layout of the ship, but the ship is a diagram of 1912 society too. Very clever.
Did Titanic pull successfully into port in ’97? The industry chatter was that Cameron, sloshing with hubris himself, had turned his movie into a modern day Titanic. It cost too much to make a profit—so much that it took two studios to finance. It took too long to finish, missing the summer blockbuster season. Its running time was too long to squeeze enough showings in at the multiplex. It was too much of a hacky Old Hollywood melodrama clone to be relevant. And, after an opening weekend of $28.6M—good but nothing close to the $200M price tag—Titanic’s naysayers looked right.
Then, something happened. Back in July, Fox had screened a cut in Minneapolis. The Midwest, salt of the earth. Happy audiences poured their good vibes into chatrooms and forums. Fast-forward to December when Titanic hit theaters for everyone. The Internet groundswell started working on weekend two, which would have been Christmas weekend, with a bigger take of $35.6M. Titanic claimed the crown for most money made on Christmas Day to date. Theaters sold out showing after showing. No seats were empty.
Then the repeat viewings effect kicked in. Reaching $300M took only to 44 days, faster than any movie before. Second fastest was Jurassic Park, which needed 67 days. In another stroke of luck, in ’98, Valentine’s Day fell on a Saturday. Titanic made $13M that day alone. It was #1 at the box office for fifteen weeks straight. Its theatrical run finally ended after ten months. The US total was $600M—$1.1B in today’s money as I write this. Outside the US, it made twice that for a worldwide total of $1.8B in ’98. For Titanic, what audiences thought made much more of a difference than critical reviews.
While the movie-going public dug it, not all critics did. Earnestness will always meet with some cynicism. Kenneth Turan for the LA Times said the film was Cameron reaching far beyond his abilities. Even said it only won Oscars (nominated for fourteen, won eleven, including Best Picture) because it made a bunch of money. Barbara Shulgasser pointed to how many times Rose and Jack just shout “Rose!” and “Jack!” in the final hour as emblematic of a bad script and missing character motivations.
Cameron himself responded by saying that he didn’t make anyone go see the movie. People did on their own, over and over, dragging their friends along too. He set out to make a movie about a compelling passage in history and how it’s hard to be a human being no matter what your deal is. The point of entertainment is to be entertaining; people don’t repeat experiences they hate. If you’ve ever felt the catharsis of a good cry (raises hand), you’ll find something to like in Titanic. Critics and civilian sticks-in-the-mud alike made the classic mistake of conflating their inability to enjoy something with the thing itself being unenjoyable. There is no shame in enjoying something. And there should be no anger in not.
Arguments of merit would settle down over time. It had earned a permanent place in culture. For Empire, Adam Smith wrote in ’19, “It should be no surprise … that it became fashionable to bash James Cameron’s Titanic at approximately the same time it became clear that this was the planet’s favourite film. Ever.” Writing for /Film in ’21, Dalin Rowell said, “Even with all of the jokes the Internet loves to throw its way, Titanic demonstrates that Cameron is truly capable of everything he can imagine.” And that was before another Avatar 2 came out!
In ’97, Titanic ruled culture. It was too much for Kate and Leo, who ducked under for months. They were only 22 and 23, respectively, and were brand new to being superstars. Billy Zane did the interview circuit and seemed to be having a ball.
Fans wanted two things: the soundtrack and the necklace.
Cameron had beefed with James Horner since Aliens, but they made up for Titanic. The ever practical director had Celine Dion cut a single for the soundtrack to help boost commercial appeal. The version you hear over the credits was only her second take. What a pro! The soundtrack sold over 30 million copies, making it the best-selling orchestral soundtrack of all time. It was at number one on the Billboard charts for sixteen weeks straight. It went platinum in the States. Uh, eleven times over. Today, the soundtrack is my personal time machine. A wormhole to being ten I can poke my head through anytime. Maybe it’s the same for you.
As for the necklace, Celine Dion wore a platinum replica with 103 diamonds and a central sapphire to the ’98 Academy Awards. But she wasn’t the only one. Gloria Stuart wore a Harry Winston (jeweler of the Hope Diamond) replica worth ten times more—with a real blue diamond at the center—to the same Oscars. Normal folks could get affordable knock-offs at varying price points. And they did. It was that or Beanie Babies.
Titanic returned to theaters three times. Once for the 100-year anniversary of the ship’s sinking in 2012, this time in 3D and remastered. Again in ’17 for the flick’s own 20-year anniversary. And today, it’s in theaters briefly for its 25th. This may be the last time we get it on the big screen. It’s special to me that you can see it this way, because I didn’t get to back in ’97. House rules kept me from seeing anything in theaters while I was growing up, though I remember sneaking into Inception and a Harry Potter movie. Having only seen movies on a Magnavox at home, I loved the big screen version when I finally got it. Not to get gushy, but the theatrical experience is transcendent, or can be, anyway. During lockdown I didn’t see anything in theaters for a year and a half. When I saw F9, I thought it was getting Oscars. After seeing it again later I knew it was just the magic of the movies. (F9 is, like, fine, but just fine. Sorry.)
Here we are, 25 years post-Titanic. I think you should see it however you can. 4k TVs are amazing. If the theater is your thing, go for it! Even if you butt goes to sleep, you won’t regret it. If, somehow, you’ve never seen this, give yourself the gift of a viewing for Valentine’s Day. If you can, watch it with somebody else! Titanic is Titanic because it’s so rewarding to share oh no I’m crying again
Hope you enjoyed this Titanic Double Feature! Next week is a week off for me. Then I’ll be back in your inbox on the 24th for the start of a new Triple Header. No spoilers, but it’s a good one.
And, hey, if you liked this, please share it with someone! Writing about Titanic took over more of my brain than I care to admit, but the story was worth it.
NOTES:
In 2017, the Library of Congress added Titanic to is National Film Registry on the film’s 20th birthday.
Interiors that flooded were shot in a five million-gallon water tank.
What it means if you’re a tape one or tape two Titanic person.
Cameron wrote Titanic while listening to Enya albums. He offered for her to score it, but she passed.
A real Kate—Kate Florence Phillips—received the actual Heart of the Ocean from a lover on the Titanic. Crazy, right?
Neil deGrasse Tyson ripped on Titanic for showing an inaccurate star pattern when Rose looks up at the night sky. Cameron had the guy send him what was correct, then redid the scene for the ’12 remaster.
Titanic was the second film about the vessel to win Best Picture. The other was Cavalcade (’33).
Other Cameron water-based projects: Piranha II: The Spawning, The Abyss, T2 (liquid T-1000!), Avatar: The Way of Water. The guy loves water!
Jack is a manic pixie dream girl.
Tape two MVP: Victor Garber
I can’t believe men are so big mad at feeling that they’d avoid this movie. You’ll cry a little, okay? Everybody cries. Be an everybody.