Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Titanic
There’s something to be said about horror movies. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, sex and death are key factors in the genre, with the inclusions of gore, jump scares, screaming, serial killer tracking shots, and characters that are written for the sole purpose of being killed in the first half of the movie. Don’t get me wrong—I love horror movies. I went to a midnight showing of ‘Human Centipede 2.’ I own the entire ‘Saw’ series. Even though I generally loathe the guy, I’ll watch new movies by Eli Roth (and own two of them). I use fear.net, bloodydisgusting.com, and horrormovieaday.com to search for the movies I haven’t seen yet, and to read someone else’s take on the occasionally bizarre plots of the genre.
But there’s a movie you won’t see on those sites. A movie that belongs on those sites, that absolutely contains sex and death, and remarkably, breaks some of the fundamental horror movie rules that even Wes Craven (generally) follows.
I’m talking about ‘Titanic.’ Oh, you say, but that’s a tragic, romantic movie, Jack and Rose’s love is eternal. I call bullshit, and not just because she married another guy instead of pining away for her the twenty-two year old Leonardo Di Caprio. Fifteen hundred people and their companion animals died on that ship—men, women AND children—and not only do we witness some of these deaths, it is without catharsis, or mercy.
Permit me to explain before the hate mail is fired off. Horror is not about how many buckets of blood Joe Dante uses on screen, or James Wan’s body count. Horror is about being shocked, and revolted, and terrified. Horror is gasping in your seat as you watch the hero put in a circumstance that would kill you or me, but the hero just barely escapes. Horror is hopelessness in the face of unbeatable odds. Horror is exactly what the last hour of ‘Titanic’ is about. Even the fact that it takes a cinematic hour for the ship to sink, not giving the audience a respite or release until Jack Dawson is fish food, is horror. The friends that I went with to the 3D release wanted to see the body bouncing off the vertical railing in 3D (which it wasn’t, not really), as did I. If I’m going to sit through James Cameron’s massive ego trip version of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ I want bodies and blood. I want that from all horror movies. We get the bodies, sure, but speaking of catharsis… where’s the blood?
No, really, where’s the blood? The one character that is shot drops partially out of view without a drop of red, and it’s not until Jack steals his life jacket that we see bloodstains and know for sure that Fabrizio is dead. Really? We’re strung along, wondering if he’s dead while the chaos around him continues, and other people die. And die. And die. The emotion builds up and up, and it stays there until Mr. Cameron is good and ready to rake your damaged psyche over the hypothermic coals of the passengers in the water. Oh, hey, audience, Fabrizio is dead, but you don’t have time to mourn him because there’s already another string of dying people.
Not even Tom Six does that. They’re dying, they’re dead. We’re horrified at how they die, then we get a shot of the corpse, confirming, yup, nothing more can be done to save the character. The hope for survival is snuffed out, and as an audience we move on.
But James Cameron? He delays hypothermic shock so we can count screamers in the Atlantic Ocean. He shows parents putting their children in beds that will shortly be under water as if it was any other night. He mixes the tide of human bodies with the crashing of dishes off shelves, and furniture flying across the room, as if we haven’t quite gotten the point that all these people are quite fucked, and the audience with them.
If you ask a jaded gorehound, I’d say Mr. Cameron mourns the loss of the ‘Titanic’ more than the passengers and crew. She tears apart, she bleeds, she loses chunks in the ocean. The emotional resolution, the catharsis of the ‘titanic’ herself is granted multiple times thanks to the additional computer simulations that deserve spoiler alerts (if you live in a cave and know neither history nor remember 1997 when the movie first came out). We get a corpse, featured prominently in the beginning. But rather than being jerked along a rollercoaster of emotions, the cold silence allows the rational mind to process this long dead ship, and how it got that way.
The emotional resolution of Jack isn’t granted until well past the point of reality, when my friends and I were rolling our eyes and craving a round of stiff drinks. There’s never a dead body, just dying, dying, dying. He literally cannot die until James Cameron has wrung out the last tears and justified the painfully sentimental, over the top attention on the love story that can only end badly. And holy crap, the drawing? Those were Cameron’s hands masquerading as Di Caprio’s; if this director was any more in love with himself first, the emotional torment second, and the ship third, Narcissus would resign in shame. And someone in an audience will always cry over it. People were crying for the whole final hour of the movie, in that theater in 2012. There were people there that saw the film the first time it came out in 1997, probably owned it on VHS and then DVD, and they were crying. There were gasps, and even a few awws.
It’s a well-made movie because it does all of that to the audience, and continues to sixteen years after its initial release. I’ll grant that. It was cast well. The set, costumes, and props are gorgeous. The script could’ve been much more trite. But it is horribly, intentionally miscategorized as a romantic movie to garner more attention, more money, and more accolade. It is a sadistic trip down memory lane with no hope, and no release. A ton of people died, and the audience is never granted the chance to mourn them.
I’d rather watch ‘The Room’ on repeat than watch ‘Titanic’ again. Screw you, James Cameron, and while I’m at it, screw you for changing the tone of the ‘Alien’ movies. Thank god we got Ridley Scott back for the prequel.
~~SdS
But there’s a movie you won’t see on those sites. A movie that belongs on those sites, that absolutely contains sex and death, and remarkably, breaks some of the fundamental horror movie rules that even Wes Craven (generally) follows.
I’m talking about ‘Titanic.’ Oh, you say, but that’s a tragic, romantic movie, Jack and Rose’s love is eternal. I call bullshit, and not just because she married another guy instead of pining away for her the twenty-two year old Leonardo Di Caprio. Fifteen hundred people and their companion animals died on that ship—men, women AND children—and not only do we witness some of these deaths, it is without catharsis, or mercy.
Permit me to explain before the hate mail is fired off. Horror is not about how many buckets of blood Joe Dante uses on screen, or James Wan’s body count. Horror is about being shocked, and revolted, and terrified. Horror is gasping in your seat as you watch the hero put in a circumstance that would kill you or me, but the hero just barely escapes. Horror is hopelessness in the face of unbeatable odds. Horror is exactly what the last hour of ‘Titanic’ is about. Even the fact that it takes a cinematic hour for the ship to sink, not giving the audience a respite or release until Jack Dawson is fish food, is horror. The friends that I went with to the 3D release wanted to see the body bouncing off the vertical railing in 3D (which it wasn’t, not really), as did I. If I’m going to sit through James Cameron’s massive ego trip version of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ I want bodies and blood. I want that from all horror movies. We get the bodies, sure, but speaking of catharsis… where’s the blood?
No, really, where’s the blood? The one character that is shot drops partially out of view without a drop of red, and it’s not until Jack steals his life jacket that we see bloodstains and know for sure that Fabrizio is dead. Really? We’re strung along, wondering if he’s dead while the chaos around him continues, and other people die. And die. And die. The emotion builds up and up, and it stays there until Mr. Cameron is good and ready to rake your damaged psyche over the hypothermic coals of the passengers in the water. Oh, hey, audience, Fabrizio is dead, but you don’t have time to mourn him because there’s already another string of dying people.
Not even Tom Six does that. They’re dying, they’re dead. We’re horrified at how they die, then we get a shot of the corpse, confirming, yup, nothing more can be done to save the character. The hope for survival is snuffed out, and as an audience we move on.
But James Cameron? He delays hypothermic shock so we can count screamers in the Atlantic Ocean. He shows parents putting their children in beds that will shortly be under water as if it was any other night. He mixes the tide of human bodies with the crashing of dishes off shelves, and furniture flying across the room, as if we haven’t quite gotten the point that all these people are quite fucked, and the audience with them.
If you ask a jaded gorehound, I’d say Mr. Cameron mourns the loss of the ‘Titanic’ more than the passengers and crew. She tears apart, she bleeds, she loses chunks in the ocean. The emotional resolution, the catharsis of the ‘titanic’ herself is granted multiple times thanks to the additional computer simulations that deserve spoiler alerts (if you live in a cave and know neither history nor remember 1997 when the movie first came out). We get a corpse, featured prominently in the beginning. But rather than being jerked along a rollercoaster of emotions, the cold silence allows the rational mind to process this long dead ship, and how it got that way.
The emotional resolution of Jack isn’t granted until well past the point of reality, when my friends and I were rolling our eyes and craving a round of stiff drinks. There’s never a dead body, just dying, dying, dying. He literally cannot die until James Cameron has wrung out the last tears and justified the painfully sentimental, over the top attention on the love story that can only end badly. And holy crap, the drawing? Those were Cameron’s hands masquerading as Di Caprio’s; if this director was any more in love with himself first, the emotional torment second, and the ship third, Narcissus would resign in shame. And someone in an audience will always cry over it. People were crying for the whole final hour of the movie, in that theater in 2012. There were people there that saw the film the first time it came out in 1997, probably owned it on VHS and then DVD, and they were crying. There were gasps, and even a few awws.
It’s a well-made movie because it does all of that to the audience, and continues to sixteen years after its initial release. I’ll grant that. It was cast well. The set, costumes, and props are gorgeous. The script could’ve been much more trite. But it is horribly, intentionally miscategorized as a romantic movie to garner more attention, more money, and more accolade. It is a sadistic trip down memory lane with no hope, and no release. A ton of people died, and the audience is never granted the chance to mourn them.
I’d rather watch ‘The Room’ on repeat than watch ‘Titanic’ again. Screw you, James Cameron, and while I’m at it, screw you for changing the tone of the ‘Alien’ movies. Thank god we got Ridley Scott back for the prequel.
~~SdS
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