James Cameron’s Titanic makes its romance matter as much as its spectacle. Kate Winslet supplies the conviction that the dialogue sometimes lacks, while the disaster sequences are frighteningly clear and forceful.
James Cameron’s Titanic earns its great rush of feeling, despite dialogue that repeatedly makes us wince. Its romance gives a human scale to the historical disaster, asking us to care about two people within a much larger catastrophe. Cameron wants the excitement of an adventure and the intimate pleasure of watching an attraction take hold. He has 194 minutes in which to persuade us, and the actors do enough to justify the commitment.
Kate Winslet gives Rose DeWitt Bukater the intelligence and impatience the romance needs. She makes attraction feel consequential, so that a familiar story about a society girl and a third-class passenger has something at stake beyond their being young and appealing. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack Dawson is more straightforward, but his openness gives Winslet something useful to respond to. The difference between them is easy to read, and the actors make us interested in what they find in one another.
The words are the persistent problem. Cameron’s screenplay states feelings that the performances have already made clear, then keeps pressing the point until the simplicity starts to feel condescending. The class divide needs little explanation, yet the writing repeatedly insists on how we should judge the people on either side. Billy Zane brings force to Cal Hockley, but the broad characterisation leaves him little room to suggest anything we have not already understood.
Russell Carpenter’s cinematography is more persuasive about the attraction of privilege: the luxury looks desirable, which gives Rose’s dissatisfaction some weight. Peter Lamont’s production design makes the ship convincing as a place divided by money and status. The ship’s luxury has a dramatic purpose because Rose belongs to it and Jack does not. This is useful visual storytelling, and it makes the scale of the production matter to the romance.
The disaster sequences frightened us. Editors Conrad Buff IV, Richard A. Harris and Cameron give the physical danger a clarity that allows fear to build, keeping the human predicament legible within the spectacle. Cameron’s direction is forceful here without making the action difficult to follow, and the effects hold our attention because the people still matter. By the standards of disaster films, this attention to the audience’s bearings is a considerable virtue.
James Horner’s score occasionally works too hard, swelling towards feelings that the actors have already earned. Its insistence suits Cameron’s appetite for large emotions, but a little less encouragement would let some moments feel more personal. Gloria Stuart’s older Rose provides a welcome measure of restraint, bringing an emotional weight that does not depend on the young couple’s attractiveness. Her performance gives the film room for tenderness without requiring another declaration.
There is something welcome about a large-scale romance that expects us to take its lovers seriously. Cameron gives their attraction the same attention he gives the physical spectacle, and Winslet makes that faith pay off. Set aside the evening, and choose company who can forgive a bad line without talking over the next scene.
