Nearly 30 years on it is safe to admit we were once consumed by ‘Titanic’
We are more than half way through April, which can only mean one thing for us dinosaurs who enjoy a cathartic weeping marathon: it is time for that annual rewatch of James Cameron’s Titanic. Although be warned: unlike in 1998 when you revelled in the fountain of youth, there is no way you can sit through three hours and 14 minutes without a bathroom break anymore – certainly not without all that water sloshing around.
Yes, my fellow dinosaurs: April 15 marked the 113th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic on its maiden and only journey from Southampton to New York – although of course, historical nautical disasters may not quite be your forte in the way that cheesy iconic film lines are. (For reference see, “I’m the king of the world!” and “I’ll never let go, Jack.”)
Fully embracing the power of cheesy lines, Cameron’s Titanic leaves no trope untouched, be it a beautiful unfulfilled rich girl (Kate Winslet’s Rose), a rakishly handsome villainous two-dimensional fiance (Billy Zane’s Cal Hockley) who uses blue diamonds to win over women (or so he thinks), or a charming poor boy with a heart of gold (Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack Dawson).
The very existence of Celine Dion’s infamous accompanying song, My Heart Will Go On, will have made it difficult to admit that sophisticated film connoisseurs such as ourselves could ever conceivably enjoy an offering with such a rich abundance of nauseating tropes.
However, now that we are older and unbothered by other people’s opinions, some of us can now confess that we did once have our hearts torn asunder by this poor boy saving the rich girl – even if that rich girl did grow into an elderly woman who tosses priceless blue jewellery into the sea.
Why does ‘Titanic’ work?
If the above is an apt description of you, then the words “April 14, 1912” will be filed away somewhere in your memory, probably usurping other more important information such as the exact location of the TV remote or remembering to pick up milk on the way home.
Having won 11 Oscars, including the coveted Best Picture Oscar in 1998, it should not come as a shock that Titanic is still alive in the beating hearts of those who watched it when it first arrived – and it is not just because a ship tore in half in the middle of a very cold night along the sea. With the bulk of the film taking place during Titanic’s short voyage, Cameron had just four days in the script to get us emotionally invested in a sinking without taking the documentary route and making a large block of ice the main villain. Within those four days, every emotion (sadness, rage, love, hope), funnelled into the two people we care about, is heightened by an impending sense of doom.
Bearing all this in mind, April 14, 1912 is the date that is helpfully recited by Rose’s granddaughter (Lizzy Calvert, played by Suzy Amis Cameron) as she reads it off a mysteriously unharmed charcoal drawing featuring a sultry woman wearing a very expensive necklace. Up until now, the drawing had spent the past 84 years locked in a safe aboard an extremely waterlogged shipwreck and serves as a testament to the passionate but short lived romance enjoyed by the Titanic’s two most important people: Jack and Rose. It is also a haunting reminder that mere hours later, this very work of art, along with some 1,500 people (including ill-fated Jack) would be swallowed whole by the dark, icy waters of the North Atlantic.
However, in the present day, treasure hunter Brock Lovett is less interested in any of these 1,500 people or their pre-death swim, and far more keen on this elusive piece of jewellery, which has led him to scouring the ocean for years. Elderly Rose, in turn, acts extremely cagey throughout her very long recollection of the fate of that diamond, and withholds a key detail about its whereabouts that Brock would probably have given his right arm for. Rose may have left viewers gobsmacked when she threw it overboard in her twilight moments without telling anyone, but maybe she had a point: the greed that drives Brock is not so different from her hideous ex-fiance Cal’s love for riches. Brock deserves to be denied the necklace, and it is fitting that Rose gets to be the one to thwart one last man with a blue diamond.
Why does the heart go on?
Many of us will have heard that landmark “April 14, 1912” in a cinema in 1998, and if this was you, then you are probably going to be appalled to learn that 1998 wasn’t in fact, just 10 years ago. Now that we have made it to 2025, it has been a whopping 27 years since Cameron’s epic three-hour film about the doomed ocean liner unleashed across cinemas worldwide. Wringing the most out of a deep-sea tragedy, Cameron was directly responsible for a wave of global frenetic female sobbing as Jack, valiantly declining a space on a floating piece door for Rose, froze to death and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic like a lead balloon.
It is unclear whether or not the sinking of Titanic – or more accurately, the freezing and subsequent sinking of Jack – also induced any male sobbing. Such figures are hard to come by on account of male viewers either not being moved by whispered mid-ocean vows of never letting go, or being unwilling to admit it if they were. Whatever the case may be, let us settle this long-standing Titanic debate once and for all: no, there was no room for Jack on that door (“because that is what it said on p147 of the script”, as a weary Cameron told Vanity Fair in 2017). Even if there was, by then Jack was most likely too cold and tired to try again after having spent a lively evening escaping from a small prison, dodging bullets, and trying to not get crushed to death by a giant ocean liner breaking apart. He rescued Rose and, as his final act of heroism, extracted from her a promise that she would never let go of her will to live. A sobbing Rose, in turn, kept her word and never did let go – neither of Jack in her heart, nor of her newfound lease on life. If Jack had had the foresight to advise her to not dispose of the necklace he had drawn hours before his death, old Rose may well have given Brock the happy ending he so craved.
As for us, Titanic is not the place to seek a happy ending. One heartbreak a year is enough. We will return next April, hoping once more that this time, Jack will find a way to fit on that door, but knowing in our hearts that, like always, he probably never will.
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