Titanic (1997) Is A Cinematic Masterpiece
don't change my mind.
It seems there are at least two Wikipedia deep dives that James Cameron and I have in common: whales and sinking ships. Unfortunately this substack is not about whales, but did you know that we really only have a GUESS of the blue whale population because of how deep they swim and how seldom they are seen? (Keep in mind this is the largest animal to have ever lived.) Ever since they were hunted to near extinction, blue whales have been like — The surface? No thanks.
And okay, I guess the only two shipwrecks I’ve really gone down the rabbit hole on are Titanic and the Edmund Fitzgerald. But both ships were huge!!! Titanic measured a length of 882 feet, and the Fitzgerald was 730 feet. It feels truly remarkable to me that something that size could go down — and in the Fitzgerald’s case, go down in mere seconds, without time to call for help. So next time you hear a Midwesterner comparing the Great Lakes to the ocean, don’t laugh, because a lot of shipspeople describe the Great Lakes as being more treacherous than the Atlantic! This also makes sense in terms of Science, because the Great Lakes are obviously shallower and smaller than the oceans, so the waves are more compressed and therefore more violent, more sudden, and harder to predict.
Wow! Digressing again. This substack is about Titanic the movie, but, of course, what makes the movie so incomparable is the true scope of the disaster, and I will be spending a good amount of time on the disaster itself.
I don’t like pictures / footage of shipwrecks (too scary!) so I won’t be sharing any of those here, but, fun fact, James Cameron did get his own footage of the Titanic wreck for the movie. That man is certainly Goal Oriented.
Now, the other thing I suspect James Cameron and I have in common is a strong, borderline annoying desire to get people to care about the thing we care about. I’ve seen Titanic many times. But it was only in the last few viewings that I realized, Oh — James Cameron made this movie to get people to care about the Titanic. He didn’t just wake up one day like: You know what would sell? A love story set on board the Titanic. No, he woke up one day like: It’s really fucking bothering me that not enough people know all this stuff about the Titanic.
Rose and Jack — they’re the thing he invented to make you want to watch what is honestly a horrific event to witness.
I think that’s why when you break it down, this movie is not only a cinematic masterpiece, but it also does justice to the tragedy, as well as to the social conditions and inequality highlighted by it.
Okay, let’s watch this movie for the millionth time, while I talk!
I often forget that Titanic is told in a frame narrative; we’ve got some treasure-hunting dudes on a boat listening to Old Rose tell the story behind this drawing they found of her, and of course, her experience of the disaster. I think this is a really effective choice — we spend very little time in the present, so it’s not distracting to go back and forth, and setting it in the present helps drive home the point that we often don’t think about what certain events in the past were really like to live through. These guys only agreed to listen to Old Rose in the first place because they want the big juicy diamond she’s wearing in the drawing! Callous much?? So, they gotta pay the tragedy tax and listen up.
The first scene we flashback to is the one that probably won Titanic its many Oscars, where the ship is preparing to depart. I love the energy of this scene, and it makes me sad! These people were all so excited.
Rose and her entourage roll up and basically ditch all their bags to be taken care of by someone else. Old Rose talks in voiceover about how awe-inspiring Titanic was, and Young Rose is like, meh, because, she’s pissed to be there. Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio is somewhere nearby playing a high stakes game of cards.
Uh, yeah. Can we talk about this quick?
This is Leonardo DiCaprio, aged 21. Would Titanic have staying power without this young man? I really don’t know. I just don’t. His hair. His hair could end wars. Has anyone ever seen hair like that before or since?
Yes, Kate Winslet is gorgeous, and probably the superior actor. But young Leo? Young Leo is obsessionable. I say this having had a deep obsession with him.
Okay so Leo — sorry, Jack — and Fabrizio —
— win and rush to get the boat. This begins one of the things I really like about the movie in general, which is the amount of quick (often just a line of dialogue) references to real life circumstances.
This guy says — Have you undergone inspection?
And Jack’s like — of course we have! And anyway, we’re American.
Nothing more is said about it so it’s easy to forget or write off as like, Wow, they really narrowly made it on board! But then I was like, hmm, did Rose and her group undergo inspection? Don’t remember seeing that. And you don’t! Because only third class was subjected to a health inspection for disease and lice. Jack’s little lie that they’re both American — Fabrizio is not — also points out the racism at play, because pretty much everyone in third class was emigrating to the U.S. (like, they weren’t tourists!) and were anywhere from Irish, Scandinavian, Eastern European to even Lebanese or Chinese. So the crew was probably way less inclined to think Americans were disease-ridden.
Just a good detail! Another great detail happens when Jack and Fabrizio meet an Irish guy who remarks, “15,000 Irishmen built this ship.” This is a reference to the shipyard in Belfast where Titanic was built over the course of 2 years. I couldn’t find any information on what these people were paid, but 8 men lost their lives during the building effort. And guess who owned the White Star Line, the company that owned Titanic? Evil tycoon goon from history J.P. Morgan! 🙃 He was tryna monopolize the shipping industry. Classic!
Back to the movie! I love this joke when Jack and Fabrizio roll up to their dorm.
The script actually has a great sense of humor, which I think plays especially well when you’re a romantic tragedy. One of my favorite lines in all of movies is this exchange when Jack is trying to talk Rose out of jumping:
J: You ever uh, you ever been to Wisconsin?
R: What?
LOL.
Let’s back up to what brought this about. So yeah, Rose is rich, her mom is mean, and she’s engaged to an evil tycoon goon.
She’s like really not having a good time in first class, even though Molly Brown is there and she’s a gas. (Btw WE. LOVE. MARGARET BROWN.)
This was my first viewing of Titanic where I started to be cognizant of how much I really don’t get about Rose’s backstory. She mentions Philadelphia society, but why were they in England? Was she just collecting Picasso and Monet paintings? Is she American and doesn’t know where Wisconsin is? Anyway, she’s sitting at dinner like, if this is what my life is going to be like, I want out.
But then—
“Don’t do it!” he says, very reasonably.
Maybe it’s corny, but honestly? Jack’s reasoning — “I’m involved now. You jump, I jump in after you” — is probably exactly what Rose needed to hear in this moment. Like, it is possible for a random stranger to see you when you’re not feeling seen. Wisconsin really gets its moment here when Jack describes falling through the ice while ice-fishing. And of course, the foreshadowing throughout is just physically painful. “I’m really not looking forward to how cold that water’s gonna be.”
No! Rose gets all tripped up in her fancy clothes and shoes and slips, and Jack is holding onto her by one arm. Eek! Wealth so oppressive it nearly killed her twice.
I LOVE what Jack says to her: “I’ve got you — now pull yourself up. You can do it.” Feminism (!!!!) and honestly? How to be a good partner in 11 words. I’m here for you, but YOU are here for you! The way Jack clearly sees and believes in Rose’s strength is my favorite part of their relationship.
There’s a bit of confusion when Rose and Jack collapse onto the deck together, but after some explanation, Jack is declared a hero, not a perv. Let’s get one more shot of Leo for good measure.
Okay, Day 1 on Titanic, done! Now it’s Day 2 and we’ve got Bruce Ismay, the Chairman of White Star Line, pressuring Captain Smith to increase Titanic’s speed so they can arrive in New York early and “make headlines.” Well, you’ll make headlines, all right.
So, this guy is one of the movie’s main villains, because, we need villains or the popcorn won’t pop I guess. I didn’t tell you guys about how he was obsessing over the Titanic’s size at dinner last night and Rose made a sassy joke to him involving Freud.
So the Captain’s like, speed up? Idk about that. But, he ends up issuing the order. This whole exchange was part of a testimony one passenger gave after the sinking, but no one could confirm if her reading of the conversation between them was accurate or not. People argue over whether Ismay was really so horrible, and he never recovered from the Titanic sinking so it’s not like he took it all lightly.
ANyway he’s a villain, let’s move on to Rose and Jack, who are hanging out.
They’re just shootin the breeze and bonding over their shared interest in art (DING DING JACK HAS A SKETCHBOOOOOK!). More comedy happens when Rose accuses Jack of having a love affair with one of his models and he says, “No no no. Only her hands. She was a one-legged prostitute.”
This is where Jack basically inspires what will become Rose’s zest for life. She wants to travel free as the wind, just like him! And he says, “We’ll go.” 🤩🤩🤩
So now, there’s dinner in first class that Jack gets invited to because he saved Rose’s life last night. Molly Brown outfits him.
Jack is the first one there, which is impressive because getting to first class from steerage was apparently quite difficult to navigate.
This dinner is a really interesting scene to me. It’s kind of like the perfect bubbling pot of tension, because obviously there’s the sexual tension between Jack and Rose, there’s the clash of power/ assertion of dominance between Rose and Cal, Cal and Jack, and Rose and her mom, and there’s the glaring gap in class between everyone and Jack. Jack is treated diversely by the different richies; Cal, for example, is condescending, but makes a show of being gracious; Rose’s mom barely deigns to look at him; Molly treats him normally; and the other richies seem to view him as entertaining. Well Mr. Guggenheim, if you can believe it, last night I dined with a poor person! He had quite the colorful tales!
I mean, I said it’s interesting, but it’s also boring, because it’s so stuffy up there! Let’s go to the party in steerage.
There’s so much movement!!! Compared to the scene upstairs, which was very static, everyone sitting around the table. There’s a quick cut to upstairs—
Then back to this—
So there’s the men upstairs, who need their cigars lit for them, and the men downstairs, who drink beer and arm wrestle. I guess this says something about masculinity in general but I’m more interested in how it applies to Rose, someone who has more masculine energy and is finally free to tap into it.
Ok, that was fun! Day 2 on Titanic, over. It’s Day 3, Cal and Rose are having breakfast in like a private terrace (which I think is supposed to imply they have the most expensive tickets possible, at 61k in today’s $$) and Cal is like— Why didn’t I get some last night?
He doesn’t literally say that but it IS what he’s saying. I didn’t pick up on Cal’s obsession with f***ing Rose until this most recent viewing, but yeah, he’s pissed she’s not putting out yet. Btw do you know how old they are? Cal is 30 and Rose is 17. (Jack is 20.)
Rose brushes him off, but then gets bold and is like, I saw you had your evil henchman spy on me in the steerage party. (Sorry, I haven’t screenshotted Cal’s henchman yet but he’s the movie’s other villain.)
Like most evil tycoon goons in 1912, Cal doesn’t like being questioned.
That was terrible! And to add insult to injury, Rose’s mom comes in later and makes all these references to the “money being gone” (I’m unclear on if the dad is dead or a deadbeat?) and pressures Rose about her duty to support them both. “Of course it’s unfair!” she says when Rose protests. “We’re women.” I mean, you ain’t wrong, but why don’t you join Molly Brown and fight for suffrage?
It’s still a good reminder for anyone who might be thinking, is Rose’s life really so bad? She’s rich! Well, in 1912, women don’t own shit.
So now Rose is like uggggg I guess Jack is a pipe dream. So she’s back to business and goes for a walk with Mr. Andrews (naval architect) and asks why there aren’t enough lifeboats for everyone on board. Fun conversation topic!
Oh wait! I got a screenshot of the henchman.
Rose’s willingness to fund her mother’s lifestyle with her evil tycoon goon fiance’s money dissipates within a few hours, and she meets up with Jack at sunset.
OK.
“I’m flying, Jack!” Corny, sure. BUT. What’s the opposite of drowning?
Okay, the sun is going down and we gotta move fast. Jack has graciously agreed to sketch Rose in the nude while wearing Cal’s big fat diamond that he offered in exchange for Rose to please, please have sex with him soon, please.
Wait, whose voice is that? Oh! It’s Old Rose. I forgot about her!! That’s because I’m sucked in, like these fools.
Ha! Bet you all forgot a ship was bout to sink, huh? Well, fun’s over, people. We’re T-minus 2(?) hours until collision.
Rose absolutely slays when she leaves the drawing in the safe with this note.
Rose and Jack run away from the henchman through a bunch of boiler rooms, and go have sex in a car. (!!!) Just THINK how pissed Cal’s gonna be when he finds out about this.
Afterward, they run out onto the deck and Rose says, “When the ship docks, I’m getting off with you.” Ugh. See, this is where sometimes, it’s pretty effective storytelling to start out knowing about the impending tragedy. Because now we’re all sitting here bawling like BUT THE SHIP NEVER DOCKS THIS IS SO SAD.
Okay so now we’re cutting over to various crew members while they gab on the job. This is right about where all the ABSOLUTELY INSANELY UNLUCKY CIRCUMSTANCES begin to pile up.
There’s a brief line like, “Hey, did you ever get a pair of binoculars for the lookout?”
This is referencing the ABSOLUTELY INSANELY UNLUCKY fact that there was a pair of binoculars locked in a cabinet that no one had the key to, because the guy with the key got reassigned to a different ship last minute and forgot to leave it on board. (This is TRUE.) This means the lookout lads are relying on their naked eye to spot icebergs late at night, in the freezing cold. Add to that there was no moon, making the sky even darker; and the water was extremely calm and glassy, so there weren’t any ripples or waves around icebergs that would make them more visible.
The other thing is Titanic is still going as fast as it can go (thanks Ismay!!) — in spite of the fact that a nearby ship, the Californian, radioed Titanic to let them know the water was full of icebergs. Yeah, remember how your whole life you heard that the closest ship was the Carpathia? Yeah……… we’ll talk about that later. Right now all you need to know is the Captain of the Californian is like, this shit is a minefield, so we’re actually going to turn our engines off and wait out the night.
Another INSANELY UNLUCKY circumstance: the telegraph system on Titanic was apparently down all day and only just got back on right around now, so the telegrapher was overwhelmed trying to clear a backlog of messages sent by passengers and ended up yelling SHUT UP I CAN’T HEAR at the Californian’s radio-er when he tried to warn of icebergs. So, the message about icebergs was never relayed to the other officers. For reasons I still don’t understand tho….. the Californian shut off their radio after this. (All of this — the message backlog, the Californian — are actually deleted scenes from the movie.)
So, just before midnight, an iceberg is spotted dead ahead, only 500 meters away. Keep in mind Titanic herself is about 270 meters. Cameron’s depiction of the phone ringing several times before someone picking up — as well as the lines of dialogue — are apparently true: “Is there anyone there?!” “Yes, what do you see?” “Iceberg, right ahead!” “Thank you.”
Even though it’s obviously horrible, I really like this whole subsequent scene because it shows how quickly everyone acted and how all hands had to be on deck to try to avoid the collision. It also just goes to show how much labor was required to freaking run this operation.
The decision is made to reverse the engines (to back up) while steering hard to the left. This started to work, but it was just too late, and the boat scrapes against the iceberg on its righthand side.
It’s a VIOLENT scrape. It SUCKS and seeing it like this helps you realize how freaking big this iceberg was— taller than the ship! And the SOUND. uggggg.
You’ve probably heard people say that if Titanic had just hit the iceberg head on, it wouldn’t have sunk. The theory is that the force from a head on collision would have transferred right back into the ship, causing it to smoosh, rather than get ripped open on one side the way it did. And in fact, when the watertight compartments were designed, that was the type of circumstance the builders were anticipating, thinking no more than 4 compartments would ever flood at once.
But, human decision making! The gash in the side is like 300 feet long. 6 compartments are compromised and begin flooding. Again, violently — like, water bursting in.
Andrews is summoned (who, by the way, is played by Victor Garber, a combination of actor/character I would trust with my life), who is like, oh fuck — we’re going to sink. Like, in an hour. Maybe two.
This is maybe the single most genius thing James Cameron does in this whole entire movie. When Andrews says this, there’s 90 minutes left. You’re about to watch the ship sink in real time.
Because here’s the other thing Andrews knows about these watertight compartments — they’re only watertight horizontally. So once the front of the ship starts getting pulled downward by the weight of the water, the water in the watertight compartments is able to spill out, because it’s no longer level. That’s why the ship sank so rapidly.
So, Andrews has pretty much totally changed the vibe to one of doom, and the crew start sending out distress signals over radio and ordering passengers on deck to the lifeboats.
Ah, the lifeboats. Remember them? There’s only 20, aka not enough by half. Why this?
It wasn’t cost; having enough boats to fit everyone would’ve added only 16k to Titanic’s total bill of 7.5 million. It also wasn’t exactly an oversight, although Andrews himself suggested they have 48; Titanic was adhering to the regulations of the time. The general belief of ship designers was that “every ship should be her own lifeboat” — i.e., even a ship in trouble should be able to stay afloat more than long enough for help to arrive (in other sinkings, ships stayed afloat for half a day). Lifeboats were always envisioned to be used to ferry passengers from a foundering boat to a rescuing one, and never to be used all simultaneously, as what needed to happen in the Titanic evacuation. A lot of shipspeople actually didn’t think lifeboats were even safe at all, because ocean conditions were often too rough for them.
But, ironically, the water is smooth af tonight and it’s great weather to lower down some lifeboats. If only the crew had been trained in how to do this more than one time! It’s a slow-going process (and the reason why some people think even if Titanic HAD enough lifeboats, there wasn’t enough time to get them filled with people and launched in the water. But, I’m sure all the dead passengers would disagree, and would’ve taken their chances launching the lifeboats themselves.)
It is crazy to think about this entire rescue effort happening in an hour. Think about the amount you get done in an hour. Is it rescue effort level productivity??? I feel like it takes me an hour to make a smoothie, make coffee, and do Wordle.
The Captain wants to know if any ships answered the SOS — only the Carpathia, who can be there in three hours. Three hours! Can you imagine receiving this information and thinking, wow, so in an hour, I really am going to be dead.
Meanwhile, there’s been a diamond-stealing accusation and Jack is locked to a pipe somewhere.
Rose ditches her chance to get on a lifeboat to go rescue Jack. Good! We’re not really sure why you let him go to the pipe room in the first place.
I think this whole diamond-pipe-mishap plot is kind of smooth on Cameron’s part; our anxious energy as an audience is diverted away from the overall disaster and concentrated on this small piece of it, which is Rose and Jack’s attempt to be together against all odds. An audience needs something to root for, and we are rooting for them to at least have a fighting chance!
However, once Rose and Jack are reunited, there’s the issue of getting back up to the deck to where the lifeboats are. Remember when I told you how hard it was to navigate from steerage to first class? That was by design.
And there’s also — these gates.
This is the really fucked up thing, Titanic DID have gates between the decks to adhere to US immigration law. This actually is something I kinda wish was addressed in the movie — like, how are Rose and Jack even able to meet up so often? Are the gates open during the day and locked at night, or what?
Some people don’t buy the idea that the crew actually kept steerage locked below while the ship was sinking, but it’s CLEARLY the case that first and second class passengers had access to the lifeboats first, and very few people from third class survived at all. The order for third class women and children, even, to get in the lifeboats was not given until an hour after the collision. (Apparently language was also a major barrier, and passengers who didn’t speak English didn’t understand the seriousness of what was going on.)
To me, this testimony from third class passenger Daniel Buckley makes it sound like the gates were locked:
DAB016: ‘Was there any effort made on the part of the officers or crew to hold the steerage passengers in the steerage?’
‘I do not think so.’
DAB017: ‘Were you permitted to go on up to the top deck without any interference?’
‘Yes, sir. They tried to keep us down at first on our steerage deck. They did not want us to go up to the first class place at all.’
DAB018: ‘Who tried to do that?’
‘I can not say who they were. I think they were sailors.’
DAB019: ‘What happened then? Did the steerage passengers try to get out?’
‘Yes; they did. There was one steerage passenger there, and he was getting up the steps, and just as he was going in a little gate a fellow came along and chucked him down; threw him down into the steerage place. This fellow got excited, and he ran after him, and he could not find him. He got up over the little gate. He did not find him.’
DAB020: ‘What gate do you mean?’
‘A little gate just at the top of the stairs going up into the first class deck.’
DAB021: ‘There was a gate between the steerage and the first class deck?’
‘Yes. The first class deck was higher up than the steerage deck, and there were some steps leading up to it; 9 or 10 steps, and a gate just at the top of the steps.’
DAB022: ‘Was the gate locked?’
‘It was not locked at the time we made the attempt to get up there, but the sailor, or whoever he was, locked it. So that this fellow that went up after him broke the lock on it, and he went after the fellow that threw him down. He said if he could get hold of him he would throw him into the ocean.’
So yeah idk. James Cameron can take whatever liberties he wants, in my opinion. The fact of the matter is the insane separation between classes meant the poor people were sentenced to death, all because they might have lice! Sorry but, didn’t you already CHECK them for lice??
Also — sorry, but ALSO — third class, which was lower in the ship, was flooding FIRST. So why weren’t they evacuated first?????????
While Jack and Rose are trying to get through these gates with the rest of the third class passengers, up on the lifeboats deck, Andrews admonishes a crew member for under-filling the boats. Again, this was true to real life; one boat even left with only 20 people. Apparently the reason a lot of lifeboats were going under capacity was because they couldn’t find any more women and children. Uh, I’ll tell you where they freaking are!!!!!!
There also apparently was some confusion about the Captain’s order of “women and children” — some crew interpreted it as, “women and children first,” and some interpreted it as, “women and children only.” Ay yai yai.
Flare signals are going out, which a couple kids smile at because they think they’re fireworks. (Dark.) Now that I’ve brought up the flares, it’s time to talk about the Californian again.
Yeah — the Californian is the ship that is waiting out the night and for whatever reason turned their radio off. Part of the reason the Titanic telegrapher actually yelled SHUT UP earlier was because of how loud they sounded in his ear. That’s because of HOW. FREAKING. CLOSE. THEY WERE.
Several Californian officers later testified to seeing the lights of a ship in the distance at 11:10 PM — clearly a large ship, with several decks. The ship then seemed to stop at 11:40, which was when Titanic shut off her engines. The officers estimated the ship to be about five miles away.
At 12:55 AM, the officer on duty saw five rockets in the sky above the ship in the distance. These were Titanic’s distress signals. He informed the Captain, who was like, eh, they’re probably just “company rockets,” which is the idea that a boat is signaling to others that it’s in the area. The Captain might have also been resistant to think they were distress signals because at the time, distress signals were supposed to be fired at 60-second intervals, and Titanic was flaring at random times — which, I’m sorry, but if you’re in a DISASTER, are you really going to time out your flares?????
Even with all that said, I stiiiiill do not understand the Captain’s disinclination to go check it out; his officers were also confused, saying things to each other like, “A ship is not going to fire rockets at sea for nothing,” and “She looks very queer out of the water—her lights look queer,” and "She looks rather to have a big side out of the water,” agreeing that “everything was not all right with her” and that it was "a case of some kind of distress.” Sometime after 2 AM, they said, the ship appeared to “leave the area.” ……………………………..
Again, all of this is cut from the movie, because honestly? It doesn’t matter. The point is, the Titanic passengers are on their own.
They finally let the third class up to the lifeboats but at this point, there’s like none left and very little time to fill them. Rose is put in one but jumps back onto Titanic so she can be with Jack. Cue this screenshot again.
So now, decisions start to be made. Are you going down with the ship, or are you going to try to make it in the open water?
Some of these shots are just so stunningly beautiful. Can you say that about something so horrible? Cameron hasn’t shied away from depicting horrible things — you see so many floating corpses — but these shots have so much humanity in them.
People are jumping off; people are sliding around; and then the boat, horrifically, splits in two. I can’t imagine watching all of this from the vantage point of the lifeboats. (Also, the idea of the boat splitting in two was so unbelievable that in spite of the number of survivors saying they saw it happen, it was pretty much considered fact that the ship sank in one piece. It was only when the ship was found in two pieces in 1985 that everyone finally believed it.)
So the front of the ship? Gone. Back of the ship? Now being dragged into a vertical position. Jack is like some kind of instinctual disaster genius, and takes Rose to the very back of the ship, where they — she points out — “first met.”
How bout a little bit of comedy right before we get pulled into the sinking ship vortex? Let’s do it!
So as we’re riding the ship into the Atlantic, Rose looks to her right and sees this guy.
Have you ever watched this movie and been like — why do they make sure to show this specific man so many times? Because there’s also an earlier shot where he’s chugging from a flask.
This man is Charles Joughin, head baker of the Titanic who survived the sinking. That’s why Cameron’s got him in that all-white uniform. When the collision happened, Joughin went into action right away and got his staff to distribute loaves of bread to the lifeboats. When that was done, he started helping with the lifeboat effort, even going so far as to forcibly bring up women and children and throw them in the boats. He declined to captain one of the lifeboats like he was assigned to do, as it was already manned with two crewmembers, and instead went downstairs to “drink a tumbler of liqueur.” He then came back up to the lifeboat deck and, seeing there were none left, began throwing some 40-50 deck chairs into the ocean to be used as flotation devices. He then “got a drink of water” from the pantry and made his way up to the back of the ship where we see Jack and Rose. Witnesses say he “rode [the ship] down as if it were an elevator,” not getting his head under the water (in his words, his head "may have been wetted, but no more"). It’s 2:20 AM when Titanic disappears into the ocean.
Joughin then treaded water for two hours, until daylight broke and he spotted a lifeboat with room to bring him on. Amazingly, his body had virtually no effects of being submerged in the water aside from swollen feet, and Joughin himself said he could hardly feel that it was cold, because of the amount of alcohol he’d had.
Wow! The baker is a hero and an icon. Let this be a lesson to you all to drink a tumbler of liqueur if you’re trying to survive hypothermia.
Because yeah — the water? It’s 28 degrees, a temperature that is lethal in as little as 15 minutes.
Jack and Rose have found a door or whatever it is and Rose is on it, while Jack is trying to at least keep his torso out of the water. This means it’s time for every narc’s favorite argument:
Could Jack have fit on the raft?
Apparently Mythbusters even “proved” that he could, and doctored up a scenario where Rose and Jack would tie their life vests to the bottom of the raft to make it more buoyant???? sorry, what?? Also, we established that Jack is slightly himbo and is not WEARING a vest. This is what James Cameron had to say about it: “I think you guys are missing the point here. The script says Jack dies, he has to die. Maybe we screwed up. The board should have been a tiny bit smaller. But the dude’s going down.”
Honestly, amen to that. 80% of Titanic’s male passengers died! Statistics are not on Jack’s side here. I also think the issue with the raft is that, yes, it’s not all that buoyant — like, look at this pic.
See how there’s water spilling up there when JC comes over and is putting part of his weight on it? I think that even if Rose and Jack both could fit, they would have weighed it down to the point of being partially submerged in the water, meaning they would both quickly succumb to hypothermia. I think Rose is supposed to have barely survived, and it’s because she was able to get fully out of the water. Jack’s hope was that the lifeboats were going to come back and get people out of the water waaaay quicker than they did. (Here’s something that hurts — 13 people were pulled from the water by the lifeboats, when there was room for, collectively, 500 more.)
So yes. Jack dies. Honestly, my problem with his death is that it goes unnoticed. Like I think it might have been better if he and Rose were talking and then he stops answering. Instead, we see Rose staring at the sky and singing when she hears a lifeboat coming back. Jack! There’s a boat! Wake up! And he’s dead. Like, I want to know how LONG he’s been dead. Because it kind of feels like Rose forgot about him.
Rose is put in a lifeboat until the Carpathia arrives at 4 am ish. When she is asked for her name in New York, she tells them it’s Rose Dawson.
And that’s Old Rose’s story! There’s no record of Jack Dawson, of course, because he won the tickets. (Ol’ Sven made out like a bandit on this one.) But, Rose says, now you know that “he saved me, in every possible way a person could be saved.” Chills, every time! Tears! In my eyes. This line works so well because we saw it happen — it’s not just an empty line we’re supposed to believe is true.
As far as stories go, it’s pretty unbelievable. The odds that Jack and Rose would ever meet, let alone fall in love like this, are slim to none. The circumstances had to align perfectly — just like how they had to align perfectly for Titanic to sink in the way it did.
Freaking love this line from the main treasure hunter guy: “All these years I’ve been obsessed with Titanic, but I never really got it til now.” Excuse me sir, did you just think the ship was full of diamonds and no people? Entire families were lost!
But, that’s the thing — I’m not sure I ever would have been able to really picture this event if there wasn’t this movie. It just requires the visual to really get it. And James Cameron went all in on getting the visual right.
A replica of Titanic was built — almost to size— inside a giant water chamber in Mexico. The back of the boat could detach and rotate 90 degrees for the sinking scenes. A construction crane was used as a dolly. There were several different camera types, a number of trick shots, and CGI. Every extra (150 of them) had a name and backstory.
Of course, to shoot a film as huge as Titanic with the amount of detail Cameron deemed necessary sounded brutal. Kate Winslet chipped a bone in her elbow at one point and some people ended up with kidney infections because of how much time they spent in the water.
But, it’s a masterpiece. As far as storytelling goes, Cameron’s obsession with the details is something to aspire to; he shows you nothing without reason, and so often, the things he’s showing you are part of an effort to represent the victims’ experiences.
Like when a woman is pushed overboard during the evac because people were swarming the lifeboats? That happened: “One woman fell between lifeboat No. 10 and the side of the ship but someone caught her by the ankle and hauled her back onto the promenade deck, where she made a successful second attempt at boarding.”
Or when Cal and Jack lie to Rose that they’ll get another lifeboat? Charlotte Collyer's husband Harvey called to his wife as she was put in a lifeboat,“Go, Lottie! For God's sake, be brave and go! I'll get a seat in another boat!”
Or how bout Molly Brown, whose lifeboat (#6) only had 28 people, pleading to go and get people from the water? “In all the other boats, the occupants eventually decided against returning, probably out of fear that they would be capsized in the attempt. Some put their objections bluntly; Quartermaster Hichens, commanding lifeboat No. 6, told the women aboard his boat that there was no point returning as there were ‘only a lot of stiffs there.’”
And indeed, the noise from all the people in the water faded after about twenty minutes. Before the Carpathia made it back to New York with the survivors, four different White Star Line ships were chartered to retrieve corpses from the water, but only a fraction were recovered.
Right! The diamond! We all forgot, even the treasure hunters. Old Rose had it all along and tosses it in the ocean before dying in her sleep. I feel like it’s Old Rose’s way of saying, you just can’t put a price on what was lost. Good for you, Old Rose!
Again I’m crying. I love how, noticeably, everyone is together here— the crew, the band, first class, third class. Also, I wonder why her dress is white all of a sudden.
Ok, I think I’m done talking. I’m sad. I’m sad that this ever happened. I’m sad that it takes the loss of human life for safety legislation to pass // companies to change outdated regulations. I’m sad that there’s an “Animals aboard the Titanic” Wikipedia page because I didn’t even think of that. I’m sad that shipyard workers in Belfast wept in the streets.
Do you have any Titanic anecdotes? A favorite Jack era, as opposed to our least favorite, his pipe era? A fun fact about an evil tycoon goon? Please share them in the comments! If not, this has been —
xxx your twin flame