Costly 'Titanic' a horrible tale of love and disaster
By Stevie Emilia
JAKARTA (JP): Can we ever forget the Titanic, the ship which suffered a horrific end in the North Atlantic ocean after crashing into an iceberg on her maiden voyage and taking almost all her 1,500 passengers to their death in the icy waters?
The answer is no, especially with Hollywood filmmakers ready to put a hefty US$200 million at stake to raise the ill-fated liner to the big screen, drawing one's attention to the story of man's ill-fate meeting with nature.
Just like the ship, the biggest liner of its era, the film is declared as the all-time most-expensive film, replacing Kevin Costner's $175 million Waterworld flop.
In making Titanic, Hollywood was a little smarter this time. The film industry cooperated and shared the risk.
Titanic was jointly financed by Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox. Fox distributes the film internationally, and Paramount handles the U.S. distribution.
With such a huge budget, director James Cameron, who also wrote and produce the film, was challenged to turn Titanic into a blockbuster just as he had done with The Terminator, The Abyss, Aliens and True Lies.
Most would-be viewers are familiar with the story of the demise of the unsinkable Titanic, but Cameron still throws a few surprises their way.
The opening is a case in point. It shows a modern-day setting of the real wreck and a bunch of scientists combing the fish- filled rooms with robots in the hopes of finding undiscovered treasure.
Instead, they find a drawing of a naked girl.
A 103-year-old woman calls the head of the fortune hunters, Brock Lovett, played by Bill Paxton (Twister, True Lies, Terminator), claiming to be the woman in the drawing.
From here the story unfurls in flashbacks, as the aged but still blooming Rose Dawson Calvert (Gloria Stuart) recounts her faraway experiences.
One scene shows Rose peering into a video monitor that displays the wreck, which was taken by Cameron from the original wreck, and she sees her own reflection in the screen. In another scene, Rose looks at the monitor, which makes the distance between past and present no more than a breath apart, as the liner comes to life. These are special effects that have made Cameron a cut above the rest.
Then, we see the ship's maiden voyage through the eyes of 17- year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), and an unfolding love story aboard the doomed ship.
Appealing
Clocking in at more than three hours, Titanic is centered around a love story between Rose, an upper-class American boarding the ship's first-class, and free-spirited third-class passenger Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Almost losing in a battle against the urge to follow the expectations of her snob mother Ruth (Frances Fisher), her egoistic but rich fiancee Cal Hockley (Bill Zane), and hundreds of Edwardian society's etiquette rules, Rose is saved by Jack, who opens her eyes to a world that lies outside her gilded cage and hauls her back aboard the ship from her suicide attempt.
Winslet (Sense and Sensibility, Hamlet) finds what she is looking for in DiCaprio (Marvin's Room, Romeo and Juliet), who whirls her around dancing to a Celtic reel on the third-class deck while sipping cheap beer, draws her naked and makes out with her in the cargo hold.
An Academy Award nominee for best supporting actress in Sense and Sensibility, and declared as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world by People magazine, have not stop Winslet from having fun with DiCaprio on board the Titanic while trying to escape from her fiance's cruel valet Spice Lovejoy (David Warner).
Her role in Titanic has already earned her a best actress nomination for a Golden Globe award, to be announced in Jan. 18.
DiCaprio, 23, also declared as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world by People, has had a stunning career. For his $1 million role as a madly in love third-class passenger, he has also received a Golden Globe nomination, for best actor.
The most extraordinary scene in the movie is when Jack and Rose cling to the stern where they first met, but which is now the summit of the ship, which is vertical and ready to plunge into the freezing sea.
The computer-generated images of Titanic, especially the daytime shots, are covered with a strange haze and there are times when the giant ship does not resemble the real ship.
In the movie, it seems like Cameron -- after wrapping a love story in the tragic event -- blames the ship's sinking on the smooching couple, who made two men in the crow's nest fail to spot the massive iceberg in front of the ship.
But without Rose and Jack, the three-hour film would have been a giant bore. Cameron anticipated this by mixing fictional and historical characters fluidly after conducting a five-year study on the demise of the Titanic.
Historic figures in the movie include Molly Brown (Kathy Bates), Titanic's most colorful real life first-class passenger, Captain Edward J. Smith (Bernard Hill) and the shipbuilder's project manager Thomas Andrews (Victor Garber).
Ambitious
Cameron paid attention to every detail, from lighting fixtures to the beads on a silk gown, all reproduced for historical accuracy.
He also recreated an almost full-sized exterior film set of the Titanic, reproduced the interior of the ship and built a six- acre, 17-million gallon seawater tank in which to sink her in Rosarito Beach, Mexico.
He even hired his key personnel, who have previously worked with him, to ensure the success of the film, and two experts on the Titanic: Don Lynch and Ken Marschall (authors of Titanic: An Illustrated History).
The result of his five-year study allowed Cameron to plant calamitous forebodings in the movie, such as the lack of enough life rafts for all passengers and crew and the vanity of the ship's creators and captain.
Cameron, who was nominated for best director and best screenplay in the Golden Globe Awards, wants to show the dramatic sinking of the ship without failing to capture the beauty and optimism of its brief and glorious life.
He also reveals the dark side of humanity underlying the tragedy and men's faith, courage and sacrifice in the struggle against nature.
In its own terms, Titanic is broad enough to entertain, yet precise enough to illuminate.