Titanic

Bullseyes: 

 - First time I watched it:  ④ (out of 5)

  -  Second time I watched it:  ③ (out of 5)

 - Third time I watched it:  ② (out of 5)

Tracing the true story
₁ of Jack Dawson and Rose Bukater’s fateful trip across the Atlantic, James Cameron’s CGI infested ocean going epic is a masterpiece of 21^st century cinematic storytelling.  Well - probably.

I’ve seen Titanic three times.  The first time I saw it I thought it was brilliant. But by the second and third viewings it had started to grate, like ice on steel…

Gzzzzznn...

I thought it might be Celine Dion’s singing which wore me down (that song really does go on…).  But on closer inspection I noticed there was more to it.  Firstly the acting was…iffy.  The first time around I was so blown back in my seat by the big ship CGI that Leonardo DiCaprio’s too-cool-to-be-poor invention of sketch artist Joe Dawson breezed by me like the wisps of Atlantic air that I was sure James Cameron had somehow pumped into the vents of the theatre.

Weee!  Ah!

“Ar don’t need a home” drawls Jack, to the upturned ears and noses at the Captain’s table, “I just need a pencil, the clothes on ma back and a one armed prostitute lyin’ nakid on my bed”

“Aw gosh Jack!”

Kate Winslet is similarly delusional.  A chance encounter at the bow and suddenly she’s jigging around in steerage and hocking up over the railing…?  I don’t think so! The class boundaries that defined us back then are as rigid as they are now and no amount of Irish blarney and upturned eyebrow is going to loosen those binds.

The infamous nude sketch scene drew titters in all my screenings.  By my third viewing, despite the cinematically scaled and perfectly rounded Kate Winslet bosoms looming over my face (they were hers right?  You can’t CGI that surely?) I began to realize that the scene was probably a bit…silly. It occurred to me as I shook my head, being careful all the while not to unglue my eyeballs, that in a CGI saturated drama such as Titanic, it’s ironic that so much of the movie is…unreal.

₁ That part’s not really a true story, I was joking.  But apparently the ship sinking bit is.