T i t a n i c

It is.

Features: Leonardo Dicaprio, Kate Winslet, Bill Paxton, Billy Zane
Director: James Cameron
What if a director were given a near-infinite amount of money to tell a story?
What if the story is framed with the first "great" sea disaster?
And what if the framework was completely, totally, and utterly historically faithful to the events?
What if the director was someone as audacious as James Cameron, the filmmaker of Terminator and Aliens fame?

You would have Titanic for the holidays.

Compared to Cameron's uber-action movies, Titanic is one huge change of pace. It is a love story. The poor young man in steerage falls for the spoiled socialite circulating in first class. Romeo & Juliet on the Titanic is a pretty apt description.

The casting leaves something to be desired. Winslet is a young woman. Dicaprio on the other hand is just a boy. Even if they had met each other on the doomed ship, I doubt seriously that they would've got involved.

Cameron goes for the typical story: how the upper crust passengers in first class were nothing more than pretentious prigs while the people riding in steerage were the salt o' the earth. Cameron decorates his screenplay with stock characters: Winlet's callow fiance named (wotta shock) Cal and played by Billy Zane of The Phantom nonfame. He's a regular Snidely Whiplash stock in trade. Zane comes complete with with a Lurch-like valet played by the cadaverous David Warner. Kathy Bates plays the unsinkable Molly Brown, a brassy "new money" woman who was an actual survivor of the disaster.

At times Cameron's dialogue can be a groaner, but it gets the job done. Sometimes the cliched response is the only thing that the circumstances warrant. Others may quibble at the movie's running time and how much of the time is spent pre-iceberg, but that's all they are: quibbles.

For those of you who still don't know, Cameron had a full scale Titanic built. (Well, OK; it's 90% scale. Translation: still friggin' big.) It was capable of tilting and going under the water. The one thing it could not do is move and yet we see the ship cutting thru the water like a gargantuan cleaver. This goes to show the power and utter realism of special effects nowadays. The "water" glides past with complete fidelity and yet it was completely computer generated.

Not only that, but the real water and sheer amount of it bursting into hallways, down corridors, and up hatches is jaw-dropping. We're talking about tons upon tons of water here. Just the engineering of the flooding scenes is a sight to behold. The money spent on this motion picture is on the screen. This waterworld is a waterworld.

Cameron framed his movie with the real Titanic and the plot excuse of searching for a fabled diamond. At times he segues from the past to the present with movie dissolves the likes of which I hadn't seen before (and won't give away here) and are perfectly appropriate. They're those marvels that you have to see on the screen to appreciate in all of their glory.

While Titanic is not the best movie that I've seen this year, it is easily in the top ten. I thoroughly expect this motion picture to be nominated for Best Picture. Cameron has performed a miracle: he spent boatloads of money and did get something to show for it. Anyone else would've failed miserably.

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