As a teenager, I wouldn’t touch !? You’re telling me Paul Rudd didn’t make enough money from the Anchorman sequel?
Trust me: I’m a fellow escapist. My bookshelves are loaded down with high fantasy. So I kind of get the superhero thing. I might even want to get it. Alas, economic magnitudes separate paperback fantasy authors from the MCU entertainment behemoth, and I’ve consistently found frustration, not escape, in the hands of our cinematized superheroes.
Leo and Kate aren’t portraying real historical figures in Titanic, but we can generally imagine their story as it happened. Leo, down on his luck after some sort of streetwise MFA program, strikes gold in a winning hand of poker. Good for him! Kate, thrust into a relationship of circumstance, is expected to conform to both familial and societal expectations. We empathize with her, just like we empathize with shipbuilder Thomas Andrews (Garber), who would rather sink with his prized project than live with its failure.
I don’t know what it’s like to get bitten by a radioactive spider, or to receive a “top-secret super soldier serum.” But I’ve swum in cold water. I’ve been in love. Maybe not so intensely and all at the same time, but, anyway, what I’m trying to say it that Titanic touches us because of its realness. Actual babies were made on the Titanic! You can visit certain museums and run your hands along bits of the ship’s salvaged hull. The thing itself is still down there deteriorating at the bottom of the sea, looking more and more like Bill Nighy in Pirates of the Caribbean—and if that doesn’t give you the chills, I don’t know what will.
I’ll Never Let Go
Not unlike the steady, irreversible flooding of the Titanic’s bow compartments, the blockbuster’s splendor washed over me in well-paced spoonfuls. Yet one particular moment saw me fall wholly into its thrall. Perhaps an hour into the film, Captain Edward Smith (Bernard Hill) ambles up to the helm and says, “Take her to sea, Mr. Murdoch. Let’s stretch her legs.”
“All ahead full!” comes the cry.
Now we’re transported beneath decks to the ship’s engine room, where sequoia-sized pistons rise, roll, and plunge with terrifying force. Gauges spin. Wheel valves crank. Steam explodes from pressurized cavities. Before viewers can acclimate themselves to the spectacle, we descend even lower, to the soot-choked boilers and their hellish labor.
If not for this magnificent sequence, it would be easy to forget that everything happening up on the first-class deck is being powered by fifty sweat-soaked Irishmen down below. These coal-shoveling stokers lay bare the human scale of Titanic. Life, they remind us, can be freaking miserable. For all that Leo suffers in this film, his hardship seems petty compared to even a few hours working the fuel compartments.
Staring wide-eyed at the boiler room scene, I reflected with horror at the very real price that some people have paid—and still do pay—to come to America. As I found myself thinking about that, I realized that Titanic is so much more than a soppy love story. Its’ a parable for our times, a reflection on class, industry, and arrogance.
Most of all, it’s relatable. And that makes Titanic a really, really good movie.
Keep obsessing! Sign up for the Daily Beast’s Obsessed newsletter and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
