The Titanic: A

One would assume that as the opening credits of James Cameron's Titanic scroll past you overlayed softly doomed music that it's all some sort of sick joke, that Cameron is going to pummel you over the head with the morbid irony of the first and last cruise of the Titanic for the next 200 minutes. Be prepared to be suprised then because as the move continues it begins to involve other elements: a mysterious older woman, a necklace worth millions, and that darn music that pops up whenever romance is mentioned. Obviously the movie is aiming for something, but what? The answer is love.

Set during against the backdrop of the biggest disaster of the 20th century, the crash of the Titanic, the movie is a lush spectacle of built-in romace all on it's own. As the camera scrolls past the faces of all the first-times passengers, rich or poor, we're invited to become one with their collective yearning and hope. Both emotions so pure they remind you of the old time passion plays of which this is gladly one. Of course the movie isn't about the passengers, who become a sort of second audience, as it is about the empowering love between Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a vagabond artist, and Rose Dawson (Kate Winslet), a "well brought up type" engaged to a snob (Billy Zane). What the movie wholeheartedly acknowledges as young love still comes extraordinarily close to amazing. They have a sort of tender-hearted chemistry with each other and Kate Winslet, losing her native British accent perfectly, becomes a transcendent women of startling character: she is both weak and strong. Leo on the other hand plays his boyish charmer with the kind of on the fly looseness that can make a character feel like they're sitting next to you as much as they're traipsing around on screen. Both performances are breathtaking in their beauty and realism. They are the central characters in what can only be described as doomed romanticism.

Let's hold on right there though. I'm far more interested in talking about the spectacle itself at this point, it is after all one-third of the movie. As the ship collapses, slowly and with wrenching consistency, one can almost feel as if the 20th century up to that point were being eaten as well. The class system that had so empowered the willful and the hungry thirty years previous was now killing thousands (who were trapped by steel grates in steerage below deck). However as one captain points out: "you're money can't save me anymore than it can save you now". With the depression not 20 years off he's probably right. The mamoth sinking of the world's finest ship signified the end not only for nearly 1,500 people, but for the country as we knew it. We lost our innocence then, so easily regained from the Indian Wars, and so we were to lose our money.

Staged with the sort of easy, free-flowing intimacy and urgency that keeps one glued to their seats James Cameron takes full charge of the movie. He wrote the script, a sharp piece of writing at that, and his direction is masterful and precise. By roaming his camera over ever little detail of the boat in the first 150 minutes before it starts to sink we become as privy to it's workings as he does, and as aware of it's doom. What could have seemed to alienate either death for love, or love for death, does niether. The picture is brilliant because, with one grand and sweeping period drama, it embraces both.