Class struggles. Young love. The greed and arrogance of the industrial age. These and other themes—plus lots of slam-bang action—energize James Cameron’s Titanic, which was history’s highest-grossing film for more than a decade until the Oscar-winning director bested his own record with 2009’s Avatar. How much will tomorrow’s 3-D re-release of Titanic close the billion-dollar gap? It’s hard to say, but those high IMAX ticket prices and 3-D upcharges will certainly help.
Because it can be tempting to idealize classics and cultural touchstones like this one, I thought it might be a good idea to fast-forward through this nearly four-hour epic together for the benefit of parents like myself. After all, when I saw Titanic, I watched it with different eyes. My only child was six months old. Now she’s on the verge of 15—the very age of the millions of young women who turned a romantic drama about a doomed ocean liner into the all-time box office champ. Naturally, Plugged In has a full review of the movie, but in this space let me reinforce some of the points we make there.
As you may recall, Titanic combines the forbidden romance of Romeo and Juliet, intense thrills of The Poseidon Adventure and somber “it-really-happened” tragedy of Schindler’s List. The result is breathtaking. Even so, this PG-13 tale of Titanic’s fateful maiden voyage has been a perilous journey for young audiences ever since its release in 1997.
Titanic opens with present-day treasure hunters combing the famed luxury liner’s silt-covered remains. They’re hunting for a priceless diamond. What they recover is a nude sketch of Rose DeWitt Bukater, a survivor who (now 101 years old) sees the picture on TV and seeks out the diving team that found it. The remainder of the film involves Rose recalling those five days at sea that reshaped her young life.
April 10, 1912. Passengers board Titanic for a trip to America. All 2,223 men, women and children marvel at the grandeur of their vessel—a ship one overconfident fellow boasts, “God Himself could not sink!” Among those travelers is Rose (Kate Winslet), a demure young woman of high social standing trapped in an engagement to a wealthy, controlling snake. Rose is miserable, suffocating within a shroud of decorum. Her family is secretly penniless, and her impending wedding—arranged to preserve their status—finds her on a collision course with a future much colder and more ominous than any iceberg.
Rose snaps. Overcome with despair, she races to the rail and gazes into the churning ocean, prepared to jump. That’s when Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a carefree young artist, talks her back from the edge and proceeds to introduce her to a world of new experiences. Unfortunately, they include drunken carousing, nude modeling and having sex in the cargo hold (“This is crazy; it doesn’t make any sense,” Jack says in the midst of their impulsive romp, to which Rose responds, “I know, that’s why I trust it”). Titanic takes the attitude that such indiscretions are the stuff adolescent dreams and lifelong memories are made of—a dangerous message for young viewers.
April 14, 11:40 pm. The unthinkable happens when an iceberg shears open the ship’s hull. Titanic starts taking on water. Unaware of the danger, first-class passengers resent being asked to wear life vests. Meanwhile, the have-nots scramble from flooded quarters. From here on, the human drama is especially gritty and compelling. True gentlemen stand apart from cowardly opportunists. The best and worst of human nature surfaces as an inadequate number of lifeboats carry off the fortunate few.
The terror facing those left behind on the doomed liner is disturbingly realistic. Violent moments find panic-stricken passengers falling from great heights. Other victims are electrocuted, drowned or crushed by toppling smokestacks. A nervous armed guard attempting to control the crowd shoots a man, then kills himself. When the ship’s stern is thrust high into the air, its weight causes the boat to break in two, and the rear half crashes down on people flailing in the icy water. Once Titanic disappears below the surface, a lone lifeboat navigates the silent sea of dead, frozen bodies bobbing in the night tide. A grim climax.
It could be argued that calamity and death are central to Titanic’s maritime legacy and should not be sugarcoated. But what’s truly unnecessary is the script’s considerable dependence on profanity, including numerous s-words, one f-word, an obscene gesture and more than a dozen exclamatory uses of God’s name. Was such language really de rigueur in 1912?
In 1997 much was made of Titanic‘s titanic budget. At more than $200 million, it ranked as the most expensive movie ever made. However, the highest price may have been paid by teen moviegoers inspired to take moral cues from the film’s young lovers. What could’ve been a tender romance and a captivating history lesson was sunk by nudity, teen sex, profanity and harrowing depictions of death … now available in 3-D.
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