While watching Titanic 3D, I couldn’t stop smiling.
That probably sounds weird, considering the movie is about a real-life disaster
that resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, but there was something so
awe-inspiring, almost transcendent, about seeing it on the big screen. Like
floating in a waking dream. When you watch a good movie, whether for the first
time or the fiftieth, there’s usually a moment in which you decide to surrender
yourself, when you become so engrossed in its story and characters that
everything around you melts and nothing exists except you and the images
flickering on the screen in front of you. For me, in Titanic, that moment came about half an hour into the movie, when
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack Dawson climbs onto the railing and hollers at the top
of his lungs, “I’m the king of the world!”, his arms raised in triumph. It was
a moment of such pure, unrestrained joy that I wanted to whoop and cheer along
with him, but because I was sitting in the middle of a theater in Northern
Virginia, all I could do was beam deliriously and try not to squeal like a
pre-teen girl at a screening of The
Hunger Games. This is what movies are made for.
To be clear,
this was far from the first time I’d seen Titanic.
I own the DVD, and I often catch snippets of it on TV, but I was about
kindergarten-age when it was originally released in 1997, so this was my first
chance to see it on the big screen. And holy shit, is it worth the price of
admission. Admittedly, the 3D is unremarkable (in fact, if it wasn’t for the cheap
plastic glasses perched on top of my nose, I probably wouldn’t even have
noticed it), but the film is so grand and absorbing on its own that you don’t
need an extra dimension to be completely immersed in it. For the first time, I
could fully appreciate the richness of the visuals – the elegant costumes, the
intricate set design, the CGI that looks stunning even when it seems a tad
dated (not to mention the vividness of Billy Zane’s eyeliner). Regardless of
what you think about the movie as a whole, you have to admit that it looks
pretty fucking amazing.
Yet, even as I
lost myself in the surreal magic of James Cameron’s epic disaster
tale-meets-romance, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that for every
person like me who falls in love with Titanic,
there are dozens who regard the movie as nothing more than maudlin, histrionic
trash. I’m supposed to find the script cringe-worthy, the romance
excruciatingly clichéd, the protagonists obnoxious, the emotion artificial and
manipulative. Even many of the movie’s fans describe their affection for it as
“corny”. In other words, no one is supposed to like Titanic as anything besides a guilty pleasure because God forbid
anyone actually thinks it has real merit or depth. But there’s nothing corny
about my love for Titanic. To me,
it’s a genuine masterpiece of old-fashioned spectacle and no-guts-no-glory
ambition.
That’s not to
say it’s beyond reproach. Some of the lines sound cheesy and ham-fisted; the
present-day exposition is too long and not as engaging as the main story; there
is a plethora of plot holes (though I’d still argue that if you were trying to
survive in ice-cold water at two o’clock in the morning, you wouldn’t exactly
be thinking clearly either); and the portrayals of upper-class snobbery
occasionally cross the line between satire and caricature. I’m not so
protective of the movie that I won’t acknowledge its flaws or make fun of them when
appropriate. And I’m not opposed to criticism as long as it’s reasonable; it’s
your opinion, it’s not the end of the world, haters gonna hate, etcetera,
etcetera. Where I draw the line, however, is when people go out of their way to
disparage a movie and its fans by using such meaningful phrases as “It sucked”,
“It was crap” and “HATED [such-and-such movie] and couldn't wait for [so-and-so]
to die so I could get out of the theater. My friend and I were
giggling and saying 'just die already' for what seemed like an
hour”. It’s one thing to dislike something, but it’s another to act like
your opinion is a definitive fact and somehow makes you superior to everyone
else.
The fact is that
the animosity directed at Titanic
frequently extends beyond mere criticism. By now, I’ve accepted the fact that
most popular movies – whether in terms of the box office, critical acclaim,
awards or a combination of the above – inevitably receive a backlash of some
kind, a reactionary movement in which people who found a movie in any way
disappointing or flawed feel compelled to proclaim to the world that said movie
was “overrated” or that it “didn’t live up to the hype”, as though their
personal dissatisfaction is somehow the fault of everyone who did enjoy the
film. But few, if any, movies receive a counter-reaction as rancorous as the one
that greeted Titanic after its
initial release and subsequent rise in popularity; even the Twilight hate is, to some extent,
tongue-in-cheek. In a way, Titanic
never escaped the contempt that hounded it prior to its premiere, when the
media and a sizable portion of the public eagerly anticipated what seemed all
but guaranteed to be a failure of Herculean proportions. With a bloated budget
of $200 million (making it the most expensive movie ever made at that point),
multiple delayed releases, rampant rumors of on-set quarrels, and a
running-time of three hours and twelve minutes, it was the personification of
Hollywood excess, an exercise in self-indulgence and bombastic sentimentality
that reeked of hubris – ironic for a film centered on the infamously “unsinkable”
ship that sank on its maiden voyage along with over 1,500 unlucky passengers.
As Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman so
eloquently pointed out, the Titanic
backlash represents one of the many byproducts of our Internet-savvy, post-9/11
era: it isn’t only popular to hate Titanic,
it’s cool. 21st century
society is one in which people hide behind anonymous usernames in order to
liberally express their opinions without fear of consequences, in which irony
is the celebrated as the pinnacle of wit, success and popularity are scorned,
and optimism is considered disingenuous and shallow. So it’s no surprise that Titanic, with its sweeping scope,
starry-eyed romance and shameless idealism, became an easy target for elitist
contempt. It simply doesn’t play into contemporary notions of hipness. In a
society obsessed with realism and masculine toughness, James Cameron dared to tell
an earnest, impassioned story that took the concept of true love seriously, and
skeptics responded by dismissing it as superficial, melodramatic BS that
appealed to no one except for hysterical teenage girls in search of wish
fulfillment. They couldn’t tolerate the idea that, even in a fictional
universe, the concept of love-conquers-all could be anything other than absurd.
It was too unapologetically emotional, too quixotic, too… feminine.
For beneath all
the gripes about the predictable plotline and “embarrassing” dialogue is an
unmistakable layer of misogyny, a sense that if men don’t like something, no
one should; that because Titanic is a
non-ironic romance that wears its heart on its sleeve, it isn’t complex, edgy
or serious enough to deserve its status as a modern classic (I forgot, only
depressing movies can be deep). It’s virtually impossible to have a
conversation about the movie on the Internet without numerous guys fuming over
how they only saw it because their girlfriends or wives dragged them to the
theater, flaunting their narrow-mindedness like a badge of honor. Never mind
that it’s the 2nd highest grossing movie in the world, a Best
Picture winner and an undisputed cultural icon. For many people, Titanic is still a sappy chick flick
that men should be embarrassed to like (or watch willingly), successful not
because anyone thinks it’s legitimately good but because throngs of hormonal
girls and women wanted to swoon over Leonardo DiCaprio – to them, it’s Twilight masquerading as art. Never mind
that the dialogue in, say, Star Wars
is as clumsy as anything in Titanic,
yet you never hear anyone prattle on about how laughably bad that is. Or that men are free to
fantasize about Marilyn Monroe or (gag) Megan Fox to their hearts’ content, but
when women venture to be open about their celebrity crushes, they’re stupid,
immature and delusional. Or the fact that many of the most controversial Best
Picture winners, like Forrest Gump, Shakespeare in Love and Ordinary People, are period pieces,
romances or relationship dramas, whereas the movies that they supposedly robbed
(Pulp Fiction, Saving Private Ryan and Raging
Bull) are dark, R-rated movies about crime, war and men being men. The
cynical, male-centric Internet can’t comprehend our female sensibilities, our
obsession with “feelings”, so any movie that dares to be sincere about those
things is labeled slight and sentimental.
No wonder this thing we humans call love is so foreign to them –
they’re all men.
Then, there’s
the hype itself. If Internet commenters are to believe, no one had anything
against Titanic at first, but then,
it became the highest-grossing movie in the history of the world, swiped a
record-tying 11 Oscars and generally monopolized media and public attention for
months on end. Naturally, those not completely infatuated with it responded by
retroactively deciding that they couldn’t stand the movie and insisting that
the hysteria was massively, outrageously overblown. It may have been a
perfectly okay film, but it wasn’t anything special and certainly didn’t
deserve this level of adoration. And to a certain degree, I get it: it’s hard
not to feel resentful or alienated when you can’t go a day without hearing
other people rave about how amazing such-and-such movie/TV show/book/etc. is.
But at the same time, I’m always baffled by people who boast about how X is so
overrated and how they don’t see what
all the fuss is about, as though their contrarian opinion is somehow proof of
their superior, more refined taste. There’s nothing wrong with disliking
something, but why do people take so much pleasure in being negative? Relentless
cynicism isn’t clever or subversive; it makes you sound like a pretentious
asshole. I guess I just like liking things – except for Glee. Always hate Glee.
I like you Darren Criss, but this picture?
Kinda like the show as a whole: flashy, bizarre and the slightest bit
douchey.
The worst part
is that in the midst of all the mockery and hostility, few people seem to
appreciate just how masterfully constructed Titanic
really is. On paper, the central romance is somewhat conventional and
far-fetched, but Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet share such natural,
intoxicating chemistry that their characters’ relationship is never less than
believable, even though they only know each other for a couple days. But Titanic is more than a simple story
about star-crossed lovers. It’s also an exploration of early 20th
century class relations and a coming-of-age tale about a sophisticated yet
fiercely independent woman who discovers her own inner strength and learns to
survive in a callous, unjust world. And most notably, it’s an allegory about hubris
and what happens when the illusion of control that humans so cherish is shattered.
What makes the movie so devastating and memorable is not the romance at its
center, as poignant as that is, but the morality tale intertwined with it, the
horror of watching thousands of people descend into anarchy as they gradually
begin to recognize the fragility of their existence. The Titanic isn’t just a
ship; it’s also a symbol of power and civilization, and the events that unfold
after it strikes the iceberg feel utterly authentic in their depiction of
panic, selfishness, despair, savagery, perseverance and courage in the face of
near-certain death. It’s a vision of destruction, lost innocence and unexpected
grace that’s bizarrely, almost disturbingly resonant in our post-September 11
world. It seems to say, we are all kings of the world. Until we aren’t.
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