Titanic
1997 · Directed by James Cameron
Original language: English
- drama
- romance
The story
101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.
What it’s like
Warm golden light spills across the first-class dining saloon, then gives way to the murky grey-green of the North Atlantic and the cold blue of night, with the ship's interiors rendered in polished wood, gilt and candlelit amber against the bleached steel of the hull. Cameron's camera moves with sweeping crane shots and restless handheld lurches through flooding corridors, so the spectacle feels physical, and the digital images carry a glossy sheen rather than grain. Sound does much of the work: Horner's swelling strings and the Celtic-tinged theme rise over creaking iron and rushing water, and the silences in the lifeboat sequences are thick with dread. Violence is present and real, with a long, grim sinking that includes drowning, panic and deaths in icy water, but it is not gratuitous, and there is a chaste, sensual romance with brief nudity in a famous sketching scene. The pacing is deliberately uneven, sprawling and emotional, moving from giddy shipboard romance to a slow, harrowing collapse. This suits a rainy weekend afternoon or a long watch with someone, for viewers who want sweeping period romance, big-screen disaster and a tearful, old-fashioned love story.
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