DM_Titanic

I went into Titanic with trepidation: it is being hailed as one of the best love stories depicted on film. Cynical as I am, I don't think much of movies with a romantic theme to them. However, I was curious to see the spectacle that director James Cameron had created. Fortunately for me, Titanic is not only great in terms of action, effects, and visuals, but also provides excellent commentary on the issue of the class struggle. Jack Dawson (Leonardo Di Caprio) is a young boy who wins passage to America aboard the Titanic in a lucky game of poker (upon boarding the ship, Jack tells to his friend that they are "the luckiest sons of bitches in the world"). Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) is travelling to America, to be married to Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), a situation she is not thrilled about. Sparks fly when Dawson manages to talk Rose out of jumping overboard, but tragedy awaits as the unsinkable ship hits and iceberg and begins to flounder. In the movie, this story is presented to the audience as a flashback. The narrator is Rose, 101 years old, with the last name Dawson. She tells the story to a treasure hunter (Bill Paxton), who is looking for the famous (and valuable) Heart of the Ocean, a diamond that was given to Rose by her fiance, Hockley. The recreation of the ship, both the exterior (the rendering for which was done using Digital Alpha processors running Linux) and the interior are impeccable. The dialogue is witty and brilliant. The movie is slow at times, but reaches its climax when the ship begins to sink. The fact that Cameron takes his time in telling the story makes it all the more tense. Cameron could've skimped in any of these areas (dialogue, cinematography, effects, authenticity) and still come out with a great movie, but he doesn't. He sticks to the formula that has worked in other great epic movies, and he pulls it off one hundred percent. The ship was thought to be unsinkable, and so a compromise was made on the number of lifeboats aboard. When the ship did sink, it is the richest that got first priority on the lifeboats. While they waited in half-full lifeboats, they were exposed to the cries of people freezing to their deaths and didn't do a thing to help them. If a similar tragedy were to happen today, would the result be any different? The acting is excellent by all concerned, but I was most impressed by Zane. The nice thing about a ship sinking is that it is a relatively slow event, and Cameron takes every advantage of it. The depiction of the mighty ship going under is so much larger than life and I feel this is the most magnificent part of the movie. Just for that reason alone, Titanic is a movie not just to be seen, but to be experienced. So make sure you see it on the big screen. It goes to show that the concept of the disaster movie is far from dead.
 * The** **Titanic story**

On that fateful night of April 14, 1912 there were 2,235 souls crowded aboard the //R.M.S. Titanic//. There was no wind to speak of. The frigid, dark sea was calm, like a plate glass mirror beneath the star-spangled heavens. It was an hour before midnight on a starry, moonless night. While the band played on beneath the decks in the first class lounge, and while the night watch paced the Bridge high above, the greatest maritime tragedy in the history of sailing, stealthily, silently awaited them in the ice-strewn midnight waters of the North Atlantic. Three-fourths of the iceberg lay unseen beneath the calm ocean surface. When the //Titanic// swerved, it brushed the iceberg's underside on the starboard side of the bow, slitting a quarter of an inch wide opening more than 300 feet down the side of the vessel. Like a titanic can opener, the iceberg knifed open the side of the iron hull. The damage was just enough to cause the metal plates to buckle so that six watertight compartments began taking in sea water. So scientifically had this great sailing ship been constructed, with 16 watertight compartments in a 1/6 mile long hull, that the captain had made a pre-voyage boast, "Not even God himself could sink her". The builders had calculated that even if four of the compartments should burst, the ship would still float! But on that starry night, six of them exploded and began to suck in the frigid water of the North Atlantic! Mathematically, the "unsinkable ship" was mortally wounded. And, in two hours she was gone. Commander Lightoller, one of the few crew members who survived the tragedy, described the moment she sank. Of the 2235 occupants, 1522 met their death in those dark waters including most of the men, most of the third class, most of the crew, and all of the band. Only 713 people were rescued. And the world lined up for hours to relive their tragic story in the most watched movie ever in human history. Why? Could it be that //Titanic// is more than a tale about love and death of heart throbs Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio? Could it be that there's a deep, subconscious sense the world over that this tragedy at the beginning of the 20th century was in fact a warning parable of an ominous unnamed tragedy that hangs like Damocles' sword over our planet, while we're partying to beat the band? media type="youtube" key="8wTlureUMP8&hl=en" height="355" width="425"
 * Survivors recalled a gentle shudder that briefly shook the 900 foot long vessel. It came and went so quickly that nobody gave it much of a second thought. Except for the occupants of the Bridge–who in the split seconds before that collision, saw the towering iceberg ahead, floating in their unlighted pathway. The helmsman swerved to miss the iceberg–but they would have been better off to have struck it head on. In narrowly avoiding a head-on collision, they suffered an even worse fate!**



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