Romeo and Juliet is one of the most famous romantic stories of all time but if you sit down and actually watch the play, you’ll notice that the protagonists do not spend a great deal of time together. They meet on a Sunday evening and are both dead by the following Friday. Romeo has also recently been rebuffed by another woman named Rosaline, who just so happens to be Juliet’s cousin. Speaking through the character of Friar Lawrence, Shakespeare makes sure we understand that Romeo is acting rashly:
“Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!
Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear,
So soon forsaken? Young men’s love then lies
Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine
Hath washed thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!
How much salt water thrown away in waste
To season love, that of it doth not taste!”[footnote]It isn’t an original observation but my goodness, Shakespeare was a wonderful writer.[/footnote]
This is what makes Romeo and Juliet a tragedy – if the Montagues and Capulets were not pursuing a bitter and pointless feud, the young lovers could have had a brief and messy courtship before ultimately moving on with their lives.
Titanic is what happens when someone decides that Juliet and Romeo were soul-mates, rather than two teenagers who didn’t really know what they were doing.[footnote]I don’t think it is a coincidence that the leads in Titanic have names beginning with J & R.[/footnote]
I’m not made of stone – I enjoyed watching Jack and Rose develop feelings for one another over the course of the film. What irks me is that James Cameron isn’t very good at writing love stories.[footnote]You can see this all the way back in Terminator, where Kyle Reese thinks Sarah Connor is his ideal woman because he became infatuated with her photograph.[/footnote] The script isn’t terrible by any means – I love the scene where Rose frees Jack from his handcuffs and even though her aim with the axe is terrible, Jack says that he trusts her not to hurt him. My problem is that subtle moments like this are few and far between. Why does the first interaction between Jack and Rose revolve around a suicide attempt? And why is Cal so hell-bent on revenge that he chases his fiancée around a sinking ship, trying to riddle Rose’s body with bullets?
Caledon Hockley is probably the worst thing about this movie, and again I have to blame Cameron’s limitations as a writer. He wants to expose the damage done by the class system and I agree that the Titanic disaster is an excellent way to do that – 62% of first-class passengers survived the sinking, compared to just 25% of people in third-class. It’s also not a bad idea to interrogate the patriarchal pressure that is placed on otherwise privileged women.[footnote]Is Titanic an intersectional masterpiece? In this essay I shall…[/footnote] Bearing all this in mind, did the story require Caledon to be an irredeemable bastard? All the fiancé needed to be was aloof and dismissive – that would have contrasted nicely with the easy rapport Jack and Rose share. Instead, Cal smashes furniture when Rose contradicts him, tries to murder her and then pretends a lost child is his daughter to secure access to a lifeboat. Why tip the scales so heavily in Jack’s favour?
I think my main problem with Titanic is the same one I have with Avatar – Cameron does not do complex arguments. Avatar wants to be a story that critiques the destruction of the environment for personal profit and Cameron decided to do this by creating the Na’vi, a crude and bigoted stand-in for Native Americans – their society is unchanging, they are often depicted in a hyper-sexualised manner and they can’t resist oppression without a white man’s help.[footnote]YouTuber Jack Saint has a video on Avatar called “Dances with White Saviours” that I really enjoy, but I feel it is best to prioritise critiques of indigenous representation that come from indigenous people – the linked video was made by Elias Gold, a member of the Navajo nation.[/footnote] Titanic is nowhere near as problematic, but what does it actually have to say about class? As far as I can tell, Cameron thinks rich people are snobs and they don’t know how to throw a good party – a pretty milquetoast complaint. I’d also like to point out that Rose spends the last half of the movie regularly getting into fights with crew members: the people who do the actual work on the ship.
This review has been rather harsh towards Cameron but I need to give credit where credit is due. The best thing about this movie – the scale and the spectacle – would not have happened if anyone else was the director. They constructed a full-scale replica of the Titanic for exterior shots – only the starboard side was designed for filming but this would have caused a minor historical discrepancy as the passengers in Southampton boarded from the port side of the ship. Cameron’s response was to temporarily reverse all the props, costumes and signage on set and then flip the footage in post-production. That is a ridiculous level of dedication and I don’t think another filmmaker would have had the determination or clout to make it happen.[footnote]Titanic also pushed the boundaries of what CGI could accomplish at the time and while some of the film’s effects haven’t aged well, they don’t look noticeably worse than the ones in Independence Day or The Phantom Menace.[/footnote]
Titanic was a bona fide cultural phenomenon when it was released, becoming the first film to earn over a billion dollars.[footnote]Adjusted for inflation, Gone With The Wind made well over $1 billion in its initial 1939-42 release (although it is difficult to calculate the precise figure). Titanic was the first movie to make a billion nominal dollars.[/footnote] This led to public opinion turning against the movie for a brief time but as far as I can tell this was just contrarian sentiment. People have been arguing about whether Jack and Rose could have both fit on that piece of debris for nearly twenty years now – that only happens when a film embeds itself in the popular imagination.[footnote]Potential hot take? Avatar might have made more money but I don’t think it is the better movie or had the same cultural impact.[/footnote] I have my own ideas on how to improve Titanic – cut the framing device, remove Caledon from the story after Rose spits in his face, treat the central romance as young love rather than destiny – but it ultimately doesn’t matter. This is James Cameron’s magnum opus and he (and the crew) earned all the praise the movie received.
I hope you enjoyed this article. It would be remiss of me to not mention Oceanliner Designs – their YouTube channel has several excellent videos on the Titanic disaster.
