I watched Titanic for the first time in 15 years. It's quite good
But you could guess that, even if you were a member of an undiscovered tribe in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, or for some other equally bizarre reason had not already seen it, simply by the fact that it was directed by God-Emperor of Film, James Cameron, First of His Name, Bringer of Great Sequels, Savior of Cinema, Patron Saint of Special Effects, Archduke of Lightly Feminist Action.
It embodies all of these Cameron qualities:
The entire thing is such a fantastic spectacle, it's almost a transitional point in cinema special effects presentation (like T2 before it). His eye for excitement and tension is impeccable. Consider the actual process of sinking: the aft rising up, splitting, rising up again, sinking down and sucking everything with it, experienced simultaneously in its entire scale (via miniatures and CGI) and from the personal perspective of Rose and Jack. It is both inspiring and terrifying, those two emotions mixed perfectly.
To say nothing of the scenes where someone is trapped belowdecks with water slowly rising. I was literally sweating while watching them try to escape the flood.
The protagonist is a woman who must escape oppressive corporate or patriarchal (the two often equivalents in Cameron-land) systems.
The real villain is the hubris and greed of those existing systems. That statement requries no explanation.
One thing I think I understood on this last watch was the use of the framing device of Old Rose telling a story about her time on the Titanic, instead of just beginning with Rose's story on the Titanic. This relates to laws 2 and 3 of the Cameron-verse Obviously Rose is the protagonist and the Titanic is a multi-layered metaphor, not only for the murderous consequences of greed and hubris, but for nostalgia and the nature of memory
Many of Old Roses's scenes involve her looking in one kind of mirror or another, sometimes a literal mirror, sometimes possessions especially tinged with meaning, sometimes a drawing of herself as she once was. And the transitions between flashback and real life are often fades between the Titanic as it was (the fake Titanic, created for the film) and the Titanic as it is now (the real Titanic, the wreckage) -- very much how it must feel to remember yourself at 17 when you're 100. Her once brilliant and all-important youth, which felt to her as it does to us all: eternal, now a memory in a dull ruin, excavated, plundered, and profaned by future generations who couldn't possibly understand its significance.
That ship and that experience, it is clear, was the defining moment of her life, a life that is near to ending. Which begs another question I had never considered before: is Rose a reliable narrator? She's supposed to be 102 years old in the movie, how iron-clad is her memory of that time, even as important as it was? Byond the physical limitations of her aging brain, what about the perversions of remembrance of which we are all guilty?
Memories are just a story recalled, and recalled again, each time in the context of whatever narrative serves to explain to ourselves our current moment. They're abridged, embellished, rearranged, in service of becoming whatever we need them to be at the moment. And one particularly demanding moment might be near the end of life, when all the random chaos of chance and circumstance needs to make some kind of coherent sense
Is this why Cal is such a cartoonishly evil figure?
Is this why, when Rose tells the story, she includes parts that she was not witness to and therefore she could not have known?
Is that why Jack Dawson is a manic pixie dream pauper? Embodying the contradictory qualities that would make him the perfect cipher for her internal crisis? Both earnest and ruthless. Both hobo and artist worthy of the finest salon. Hornball drawer of prostitutes and also chaste refuser of their services. Singularly knowledgable about the workings of, and therefore the ways of surviving, the sinking of a gigantic ship. And additionally, able to be discarded when his usefulness to her internal crises was exhausted.
I think that sometimes this sort of crit-lit analysis is inappropriate. Especially in the presence of James Cameron, who is a benevolent but shallow God. If you can find a deeper critique in his films beyond the 3 principles I've outline above, I would be interested to hear it. But if his philosophical credentials were a pool, you'd never get wet above the ankles.
More importantly, I don't think it matters. The last brilliant aspect of Cameron is that his films work anyway. The caricatures of evil that he draws have enough overlap with reality that it makes the stakes compelling. It allows you to root unironically for the protagonists who are (again, if you think I'm wrong, please say so) perhaps misguided but ultimately pure of intention. And so you can enjoy yourself immensely watching them prevail.
Conclusion: 10/10. James Cameron belongs with George Miller, Akira Kurosawa, and The Coen Brothers for consideration as the Kwisatz Haderach of modern moviemaking. All hail the new Avatars.
Bonus conclusion: "We're a going a to Americaaaa!" in the woggiest way possible