Director: James Cameron
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Bill Paxton, Billy Zane
Have I Seen It Before?: I’m relatively sure I came to the film late. In December 1997, the stink of the massive delays with the movie led me—my analysis of the movie business as a thirteen-year-old were not to be dismissed—to insist that Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) would win the box office that particular opening weekend. I may still owe a school chum a couple of Star Wars CCG cards as recompense for my folly.
I did eventually see the film during its unparalleled run at the box office over the next few months. Everyone did. Girls wanted to see the movie. Now, of course, I ended up seeing the movie by myself, but one did want to be conversant in the vernacular of the age.
Not that I was talking with too terribly many girls either.
Ahem.
Did I like it?: There’s an interesting trend with the writer James Cameron. His tastes are pretty basic*. The Terminator (1984) is essentially just a slasher movie. Aliens (1986) is a war movie. True Lies (1994) is a Bond movie merges with what is essentially a family sitcom. Avatar (2009) is a pulp sci-fi novel. Even Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) is essentially Shane (1953) with robots. So, too, is this film a very basic romance story. In the hands of any other filmmaker, Cameron’s scripts could be a real drag.
Cameron the filmmaker is at or near the top of his field. I hesitate to think of a filmmaker who has been able to more successfully buck the studio system in favor of his gigantic budgets. Even Orson Welles was only able to pull of the trick once. Cameron does it time and time again. Even when he had to work with a shoestring, he knew better than most how to make each shot work in symbiosis with one another. His words may be pedestrian, but the way he speaks the language of cinema are second to none. The cast is fine, although I don’t think I’d be alone in thinking that DiCaprio’s best work still lay ahead of him, after he was sufficiently freed from the burden of being a teen heartthrob. Package that all together with one of James Horner’s finest scores, and you might not even notice that the film runs over three hours, entering that hallowed ground of movies that had to be split up into two VHS tapes (and even had to run on two discs in the here and now).
But let’s get serious. If Jack (DiCaprio) and Rose (Winslet) hadn’t been making out so close to the crow’s nest, then none of us would be still talking about the damned boat, I’d imagine.
*I know. Who am I to judge?