Movie Review: Titanic (1997)

by Mel Desrosier

The movie Titanic, created in 1997, was a smash hit to the global box office when it first premiered, grossing about $1.8 billion dollars in its initial run and 2.26 billion globally. The movie is based on the tragic events that unfolded on April 15th, 1912, when the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage. The movie follows Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), a poor young artist who won his ticket onto the ship in a game of cards, meeting a young woman named Rose (Kate Winslet), a rich young woman stuck in an arranged marriage with another man for her family’s financial gain, and falling in love with her. The movie for its long length of 3 hours and 15 minutes is underwhelming.

I watched A Night to Remember (1953), another Titanic movie that’s in black and white, when I began to be infatuated with ocean liners of the Titanic’s era and that film was a bit more focused on the ship than Titanic wasI think Titanic, in a historical sense, is a 8 out of 10 because it perfectly captures how the ship broke in half and what the insides of the ship looked like, but it doesn’t focus solely on the ship. As a romance movie, Titanic is a 10 out of 10 as it captures the feelings of young love as well as the grief of losing a lover. Ultimately, putting all aspects together, the Titanic movie is an 18 out of 20. It’s historically accurate and has a compelling love story, but the length of the movie could’ve been cut a bit shorter. It’s a good watch, especially if you don’t know so much about the ship, if you like romance movies, or if you’ve got 3 hours to burn.

Though, say you’re watching Titanic for the romantic aspect, then the movie is great until Jack dies at the end. It seemed throughout the entire movie that Rose was just pushing the runtime further; especially when she believes her fiance (who she hates and cheated on!) when he says that Jack stole a piece of jewelry from them and got him thrown below decks and chained to a pipeline. Oh, it just gets better, because after she saves him and gets into a lifeboat, she jumps out of the lifeboat and onto a lower deck because she thinks she’s never gonna see him again so HE has to run down decks and try to convince her to get back into the lifeboat but when they get back upstairs all the lifeboats are gone!

Eventually, when the ship has sunk, Rose is seen floating on one of the doors and Jack is frozen to death in the water. She’s rescued by lifeboat 14 and brought aboard the RMS Carpathia to sail to New York where she takes on Jack’s last name to live the rest of her life as Rose Dawson. I have a problem with this ending because not only was there enough room on that door for both Jack and her, but if she hadn’t jumped out of the lifeboat, he would’ve been able to stay on that same door and been rescued as well. I do really like the visuals of the movie, the overall plot, and the character depth. I like how it’s expanded on that Jack is an artist, or that Rose likes being away from her properness in the scene where she dances with Jack and the third class passengers. The visuals are appealing, like in the famous scene where Jack and Rose are on the tip of the bow or when the ship splits in half at the end. The story isn’t as captivating, but the visuals and the intense scenes of Jack and Rose being trapped below decks or Jack fighting Rose’s fiance make up for that.