That Sinking Feeling

Watching the Titanic at 50,000 Feet - In The Air

I had hoped to make it to the end of my days never having seen this movie, which is supposed to have caused a multitude of impressionable females young and old to cry a whole new ocean of tears over the tragedy of the sinking of the famous ocean liner. Or perhaps it is that they mourn the unlikelihood of ever having a love as "great" as the one between our intrepid heroine and hero (Rose and Jack, who lest we forget were played by Kate Winslett and Leonardo "Dreamboat" DiCaprio). Whatever their tears were caused by, I am sure it was not at the thought of the vast wastage of money, time, and talent in the service of a puny and cliché-ridden story.

We all know the story, so I'm not going to go over it here. My viewing of Titanic was unusual in that it was literally that - a "viewing." I did not get to hear the dialogue (though unfortunately sometimes I could read the actors' lips), nor hear the no-doubt soupy, overbearing score. And I did not, thank god, have to hear for the ninety-sixth-thousandth time that hideous theme song being belted out by Cèline Dion. Unfortunately I was unable to escape the sight of the movie, unless I closed my eyes - but by the time I had caught the first scene I was held by a kind of horrid fascination, of the sort that causes people to slow down at the site of accidents, and I more or less watched the whole thing. How did all this come about? Well, back in July of this year I was trapped in front of a tiny LCD screen that hung in front of my seat on a very crowded and uncomfortable four-and-a-half hour flight from Miami to Los Angeles, so the only way to not watch the movie would have been to either close my eyes or to leave my seat, which was not much of an option when the aisles were continuously blocked by either stewardesses with beverage carts, roaming preteens, or people in line for the bathrooms. I refused to pay US$5.00 for a pair of headphones in order to hear the movie.

What was Titanic like on a 10-inch LCD screen without dialogue? Well, it was better than me being trapped in a theater with the sound on full blast, I am sure. Marginally better. I have no idea what made the officials at United Airlines choose this disaster movie to show on a plane flight; I am only grateful it wasn't, say, Con Air. Anyway, Kate Winslett looked very nice in her many stylish Edwardian-era outfits. She also looked as if she fitted into the period - unlike Leonardo, who looked like a prepubescent Calvin Klein model who had fallen into a time warp. Neither actor was given anything innovative to do (duh). Kate, as Rose, pouts and looks miserable before Jack, and then pouts and looks smug après Jack. In many scenes she looked disconcertingly like Tori Amos. Leo as Jack was, to say the least, unconvincing as a working-class "artist." Someone as frail and angelic as DiCaprio would have been not have been buddying around with the big, dark, rough guys he is shown being pals with - he would have been hiding from them. The scenes of the ship sailing and sinking - the much touted "special effects" - did not translate well to a very small screen (mine had color-separation problems too). No doubt they were much more convincing on the big screen, but to me they were so obviously computer-generated as to bring to mind not the romance of the high seas but that Bose commercial with the computer-generated kitchen.

I did not really need to hear any of the dialogue to understand what was going on. Not only had I heard the plot described over and over ad nauseum by coworkers, but as I mentioned above I could often just about read the actors' lips, and many of them had been apparently directed to ham it up as much as possible (especially the ones in the villain roles, like Zane Grey and David Warner), so I could figure out what they were saying even when I couldn't read their lips. I have heard that the director, James Cameron, came up with the story himself, which does not surprise me. Only a director of many blockbuster films could imagine a story as puerile and self-indulgent as this one was. And how original! Here we have the destruction of a ship that was supposed to be "unsinkable" - the ultimate irony - with a massive loss of life, and all he could think of to do with this situation was to go "Hey! I'll invent a pair of star-crossed lovers, rich girl and poor boy, and put them on the Titanic!"

This movie was also twice as long as it should have been. There were many scenes that should have been cut altogether - as many of the ones with Zane Grey's "acting" as possible, for instance- as well as have been limited to one each, or at the most, perhaps two (such as the many many scenes of the boring rich stiffies at their uncomfortable dinner parties contrasted with the happy, chaotic, lively poor working class just-folks passengers and crew at their parties down below; and the repeated scene of Kate/Rose struggling through water-filled corridors in search of Leo/Jack). Even from the soundless images I was presented with I found myself much more interested in the doings of the peripheral characters, such as the nouveau-riche woman played by Kathy Bates that the other wealthy passengers keep snubbing, the musicians who played until the very last minute, the crew-members and cooks and maids who perished in the freezing waters. But like most other Hollywood directors Cameron knew what we really wanted to see was a fairy tale about an unhappy princess who is redeemed by the love of a good peasant boy - but of course who does not get to actually join him in bliss of course. As in the slasher films like Halloween et al, nookie carries a high price.

A. Harris, November 28, 1998

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