retro movie flashback: titanic (1997)

title: titanic
year: 1997
rating: ★★1/2



summary: the story of the titanic is told through the eyes of rose calvert, formerly rose dewitt bukater. rose tells of her experience on the ship of dreams from it departure in england to the fateful night of april 12, when the ship struck an iceberg and sunk.  the film follows rose's rebellion from the expectations of the upper class and her relationship with jack dawson, a free-spirited american artist. it also follows the stories of the other passengers of the ship, offering glimpses of their lives.

review: titanic came out when i was thirteen years old and i saw it no fewer than six times with my gaggle of fellow leo-crazy adolescent friends. i clearly remember going home and professing my love of this movie to my mother in the most passionate of tones. our local newspaper had a number readers could call to vote on the movies that were currently showing in theaters. titanic was the first movie i actually voted on-- quite a few times, as i recall. it was, undoubtedly, the most brilliant piece of cinema ever created in the history of time. (rating at 13: FORTY OUT OF FOUR STARS OMG AMAZING IT CHANGED MY LIFE LEO FOREEEVVEEEEEERRRR)

i watched titanic again in college, sitting on my bed with my roommate and one of my friends. we made fun of it the entire time, tearing into it every chance we got. "rose! come on, rose! rose, the axe, rose! rose rosity rose rose!" (rating at 18: one out of four stars, and only because it made me laugh because it was so lame. what even happened to leonardo dicaprio?  lame.)

it's a basic story of rich-girl-meets-poor-boy, which is what i was in love with when i was thirteen (and what i cynically hated when i was eighteen).  now, thirteen years later, the thing i was most interested in was the lushness of the costumes, the sets, the feeling of being on that ship and that fateful night.  i was interested in the stories of everyone but rose and jack.  suddenly, they were the backdrop.  this time through, i was far more interested in the visual history-- all of the other details that i'd overlooked the first time.

all in all, it was a fairly good movie-- not as mind-bogglingly brilliant as it was when i was thirteen, not as lame and cheesy as i remembered it at eighteen. it was somewhere happily inbetween just a little bit closer to good than bad.