This just in: James Cameron’s Titanic is still a terrible movie, even in 3-D.
I will admit that I did go to see it last week. It’s hard to explain why since I despise the idea of Cameron using the 100th anniversary of a tragedy to make more money. I suppose I felt that I needed to see such a culturally iconic film on the big screen since I was too young to see it in theaters in 1997. Or maybe, seeing it in my final quarter at Northwestern as I reflect on my four years of college, it was just so I could have a hearty laugh at “The purpose of university is to find a suitable husband.”
Of course, the 3-D re-release hasn’t been the only commemoration of the famous British passenger liner in the news lately. National Geographic has an illuminating cover story on the sinking and the National Geographic Channel is running all kinds of documentaries on it. Then there is the MS Balmoral – the memorial cruise journeying to the location of Titanic’s sinking (complete with period costumes and the exact same number of passengers excluding crew that were on the Titanic), which may itself be cursed.
I think my favorite media coverage of the Titanic re-release was astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson snarkily informing James Cameron that he had used the wrong star field in the film, and Cameron subsequently correcting it for the re-release. Also that Kate Winslet hates “My Heart Will Go On”.
Back to the fictional side of things, Julian Fellowes (of Downton Abbey fame) has created a four-part miniseries for ITV that will air in the U.S. this weekend on ABC. The series tells the story of the sinking from a variety of perspectives including first, oft overlook second and third-class passengers, servants and crewmembers. I haven’t seen the new series myself, but I’ve heard less than promising things about it. British viewership dropped off dramatically after the first episode aired on March 25 and its reviews haven’t sounded very promising.
Upon reading some of these reviews and after my movie theater excursion, I wondered why it is that fictional retellings about Titanic can come across as so contrived. Sarah Crompton’s explanation in her review of Titanic for The Guardian is that writers must struggle “to create suspense and interest when the audience already knows what happens.”
And we don’t just know that Titanic sinks. We know every little detail surrounding the ship’s journey and fateful end because Titanic is a source of widespread fascination and even obsession. But what is it that we are so obsessed? I’m certainly not the first person to ponder this. The aforementioned National Geographic article suggests that it has to do with the extravagance of the downfall, and that it was the first shattering of Europe’s illusions of orderliness. In an article for The New Yorker, Daniel Mendelsohn suggests that it has to do with nature of myth. On the simplest level, I think the fascination with the penetrating sadness of the story lies in the series of human miscalculations. If only:
- The crew’s nest had had binoculars
- Titanic had hit the iceberg straight on instead of trying to go around it
- The passengers had understood the collision’s seriousness from the start instead of insisting that the ship was unsinkable
- Third class passengers had been let up to the deck instead of being held back
- There had been enough lifeboats
- Those lifeboats had been fully loaded before leaving the ship and had come back to the people in the water sooner
Jack and Rose and whatever sardonic thing I could say about them right now aside, I do think Cameron’s Titanic reminds us what a terrifying experience it must have been for passengers (and James Horner’s soundtrack excellently reinforces this). So maybe my reason for spending $11 on a ticket to see a movie that I am so cynical about was to be reminded of the sadness. Maybe my placing of focus on the traumatic elements like passengers holding on for their lives or freezing to death in the ocean was my personal means of commemoration.
And maybe that was actually James Cameron’s intention all along. That and the extra pocket money.