TITANIC: A Woman’s Heart is a Deep Ocean of Secrets

Titanic (1997) – Directed by James Cameron – Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Frances Fisher, David Warner, Kathy Bates, Victor Garber, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Hyde, Michael Ensign, Eric Braeden, Ewan Stewart, Gloria Stuart, Bill Paxton, Suzy Amis, Danny Nucci, and Ioan Gruffudd.

TITANIC is why Hollywood exists.

Epic, breathtaking, overblown, and yet achingly small when it needs to be, TITANIC is both an emotional and technical masterpiece. James Cameron’s film is the grandest of cinematic spectacles, artfully blending romance and tragedy in such a way that makes the smallest and largest moments resonate with a deep emotional power. TITANIC is not a complex story, yet the simplicity of the trapped rich girl and hopeful poor boy falling in love aboard the world’s most famous ship makes their love story even grander as it is set in the context of the legendary disaster that awaits the Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean.

I fully and readily admit that I am utterly in the bag for this movie. Even when it was released back in 1997 and I was in full-blown elitist snark, “everything sucks” mode I was moved by this very simple, yet sweeping love story set aboard a massive spectacle. For me, James Cameron has only made two masterpieces, and this is one of them. (Aliens is the other.) Perhaps because these characters are so simple and set against such an important historical moment, they gain a timeless quality that sustains this movie.

Cameron’s style of directing TITANIC is to continually contrast the smallness of people with the grandness of the ship, or the importance of a small moment in the context of the ship’s sinking, and in doing so he elevates the cinematic impact of both. For the people aboard the vessel, every emotion they have takes on greater importance, while the ship itself is constantly represented as a massive leviathan, complete with towering stacks and endless labyrinthine corridors.

What works most for me about TITANIC is that Cameron is constantly offering us these intimate moments between characters, and that continually drives home the idea to embrace every moment of your life because (clumsy Cameron metaphor coming in 3 … 2 …) you never know when you’re going to run into an iceberg and run out of the possibility of moments.

There’s all sorts of intimate moments here, however, that touch me emotionally. It’s not always the romantic moments between Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), either. There’s a whole passenger list full of moments:

It’s Thomas Andrews (Victor Garber), the Titanic‘s shipbuilder, standing alone in front of a clock in the first class smoking room as his ship – his ship – is falling apart and sinking. His lament to Rose that, “I’m sorry I couldn’t build you a better ship,” reveals that he’s putting the weight of this entire disaster on his own shoulders.

It’s Molly Brown (Kathy Bates), so full of vinegar throughout the film, being deflated by the unwillingness of anyone else in her lifeboat to go back and look for survivors.

It’s the old couple holding each other in bed as water is swamping the ship.

And the moment that, for some reason, hits me hardest: at the end of the film, when Rose is standing alone on the deck of the Carpathia and Cameron gives us a perspective shot looking up at the towering Statue of Liberty. Why this moment resonates stronger than the other moments in the film is nothing I’ve ever really been able to explain. I think it has something to do with the promise embodied in that Statue of America being the land of new beginnings. From Rose’s perspective, this is a return to the United States for Rose, but it’s not with the sense of entrapment she felt at the start of the voyage. Where she was saddened and crushed by being able to see her whole life as Cal’s wife laid out before her, she now has complete freedom to live whatever life she chooses to live. Lady Liberty is once again a beacon of possibility instead of oppression. There’s a stoic strength to the Statue, too, and Cameron uses the brief appearance to symbolize hope, strength, new beginnings, and safety.

Is TITANIC a manipulative story?

Damn straight it is, but isn’t that why we go to the movies … to be manipulated? Don’t hate because Cameron writes that manipulation large. The same goes for the film’s adherence to history – I don’t need my movies to be 100% historically accurate (though it’s nice if they are), so Cameron’s altered depiction of Molly Brown is unfortunate, but not a deal breaker. What I want is for movies to be 100% engaging, and TITANIC is definitely that.

Cameron contrasts the tragedy of the ship’s narrative with the uplift of the love story. We know the ship is going to eventually sink and we know Jack and Rose are going to fall in love, and the two arcs intersect each other at the moment the Titanic hits the iceberg and ruptures its hull. Both DiCaprio and Winslet are fantastic throughout the film. Cameron writes simple characters, of course, but again, I think this ends up being to the film’s advantage, as Cameron encourages you to experience this movie instead of thinking about it. Simple characters work in TITANIC for me because I want to believe in Jack and Rose’s story. I do not want to dwell on the possibility that Jack is some kind of confidence man, and Cameron doesn’t, though he allows the other characters in the film to take advantage of Jack’s lower class to exploit this possibility in the mind of others.

Cameron frames his movie through the lens of Gloria Stuart as Old Rose. Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) is a deep sea treasure hunter on the trail of the Heart of the Ocean. He doesn’t find it, but he does uncover a nude drawing of a woman wearing the Heart of the Ocean. Back in the States, Old Rose is living with her granddaughter (Suzy Amis), sees the report, and contacts Brock’s expedition, who fly her out to question her about the diamond’s whereabouts.

While Brock and his crew are unemotional treasure hunters, but they become sucked in to Rose’s story. (Again, Cameron’s penchant for simple characters works to his benefit here, in part because of the story and in part because he’s hired actors like Bill Paxton who can convincingly portray simple characters and still make them seem like real people.) Occasionally, throughout the film, Cameron cuts back to Old Rose telling the story to the crew and I know this is a small, obvious thing to do, but it really works for me to see these cynical guys drawn completely into this old woman’s story.

TITANIC does play a bit loose with Rose’s story. Either what we’re watching is literally her version of events, in which case she’s filling in details that she couldn’t possibly know about (like what was going on in scenes where she wasn’t present), or we’re watching what actually happened, and getting more information than Brock’s expedition.

When the film ends, Brock tells Rose’s granddaughter that he’s spent three years thinking of nothing but Titanic, but he never understood until he heard Old Rose’s story. It’s a powerful moment, delivered in a wonderfully understated manner by Paxton, and speaks to why it’s critically important that personal stories of historical tragedies are told. Life is more than an accumulation of facts and dates and figures and TITANIC brings that home. Yeah, it’s a made-up love story set in the middle of a true tragedy, and yeah, Cameron is more interested in emotional truth than historical truth, but I’m okay with that.

TITANIC is a big, powerful, Hollywood love story, and I love every frame of it. In the final scene, when Old Rose dies or dreams her way back down to the sunken Titanic beneath them to find all of the dead waiting for her, and then applaud her return and reunion with Jack, it stands as a powerful moment of a life well lived, and celebrates that most sacred human connection:

Love.

BLACK DEATH: Because She Was Beautiful

Black Death (2010) – Directed by Christopher Smith – Starring Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, John Lynch, Tim McInnerny, Kimberley Nixon, Andy Nyman, Carice van Houten, Johnny Harris, and David Warner.

Every once in awhile a film comes along that restores your faith in the film industry. BLACK DEATH is such a film; this is not to suggest that BLACK DEATH is some amazing cinematic achievement that cannot be missed. Rather, it’s a straightforward film with an intelligent story that’s skillfully executed; BLACK DEATH is a good, serious movie with plenty of moral ambiguity and no easy answers.

Set during the 14th century European pandemic, BLACK DEATH tells the story of Ulric (Sean Bean) and his band of soldiers, charged with the church to investigate a remote village that’s been untouched by the plague. Joining them is Osmund (Eddie Redmayne), a young bishop from the nearby monastery who’s fallen in love with a woman named Averill (Kimberly Nixon). Osmund doubts his faith because of his love for Averill (whom he sends away to escape the plague), and prays for a sign from God.

That’s when Ulric shows up looking for volunteers to lead his men to the village deep in the marsh. Osmund takes this as a sign to go with Ulric, despite the objections of the Abbot (David Warner).

Through this early stage of the movie, there’s lots of dirt and death and darkness. Importantly, you feel all of it. It’s impossible not to compare BLACK DEATH with the recent Nicolas Cage flick, Season of the Witch, since I watched it recently, but where that movie is a slick, soulless, supernatural thriller, DEATH revels in the mud, confusion, and uncertainty that accompanied the plague.

Ulric is off to track down a witch, so he and his men journey through the countryside and through a spooky forest. Ulric’s men are professional killers and torturers, hardly upstanding Christians despite their working on the church’s behalf, but they’re not black hat evil guys, either. They’re just men, doing bad things because the Church has told them they can. That kind of moral confusion is everywhere in BLACK DEATH. Director Christopher Smith and screenwriter Dario Poloni make these costumes feel like real, individual men in a real, complex situation. It doesn’t matter that I couldn’t name any of them except Wolfstan (John Lynch) and Mold (Johnny Harris) without looking at the internet because when I was watching the movie I could count on them to do interesting things.

Osmund has trouble adjusting to everything the soldiers tell him; he’s a servant of God who feels he has betrayed God because of his love for Averill, and now he’s confronted with hardened soldiers who murder and torture who proclaim there’s witches in the world. Osmund doesn’t believe it and the men just kind of grunt and spit at him and tell him he’ll find out soon enough.

When they get to the spooky, mist-enshrouded woods, Osmund wakes up early so he can go look for Averill. When she left she told him she’d wait for him every morning for a week at a tree. When she said it I groaned at how stupid it was (okay, maybe I rolled my eyes instead of groaning), but the movie doesn’t do what you’d expect; Osmund doesn’t reunite with Averill at the end of the movie, but rather about halfway through he goes to the tree and finds … clothes, blood, and bad guys. There’s a big fight scene but the bigger impact is that Osmund’s world continues to spiral. He leads Ulric’s men through the marsh and into the village full of healthy people.

It’s here where the movie turns from pretty good to pretty awesome. The village isn’t just where the end of the movie takes place – there’s no final, big battle confrontation against the witch and her spooky locals – but a whole extended sequence that sees the soldiers asking for solace and the locals drugging their food and drink in order to kill them. It’s a really exciting turn when the average villagers get the best of the experienced soldiers. That even includes Ulric, who’s convinced there’s actual evil here, yet lets his guard down long enough to eat their food and drink their drink.

While this is going on, the head witch Langiva (a fantastic Carice van Houten) takes Osmund into the woods where she lets him witness a spooky ceremony where she brings Averill back from the dead. Osmund freaks, but it doesn’t matter because he still ends up in the water cage the next morning with the rest of the soldiers. Langiva and her henchman Hob (Tim McInnerny) order the soldiers to renounce their faith. The first guy refuses and gets crucified and gutted. Then the group’s charmer says he’ll renounce, so they make him kneel and renounce God while Ulric and his men stand in the water behind him, shouting at him to not lose faith. Langiva promises freedom if the men renounce, death if they don’t. Wolfstan implores the charmer to not renounce because these villagers are going to kill all of them anyway, but Swire renounces, gets led into the forest, and then hung from a tree.

While this is happening, Osmund huddles in the corner, shivering and crying. He gets pulled out next, Langiva promising him that he’ll renounce. She sends Osmund into a nearby building where Averill waits for him. When he gets there, Averill is all loony. Osmund is convinced it’s because she’s been brought back from the dead, which is an abomination to God, so he kills her and carries her dead body outside, then slashes Langiva across the cheek with a knife.

So Hob beats the crap out of him.

It’s Ulric’s turn next and he refuses to renounce despite being pulled wide by two horses. Before his body is literally ripped, he asks to see Osmund. Langiva allows it and Ulric orders Osmund to open his shirt, which reveals he’s been carrying the plague all along, meaning that he’s brought the plague into this village in order to enact God’s revenge.

It’s a wonderful sequence, building on Ulric’s hatred of the necromancer Langiva and Langiva’s hatred of Christians. Langiva “wins” by having Ulric’s arms and legs ripped off and Ulric “wins” by delivering the plague to the village, proving that Langiva isn’t a witch that can keep her people protected.

DEATH gets even better, each subsequent ending topping the previous one. Osmund goes after Langiva and when he finds her she tells him that she’s not a witch, at all, meaning she never brought Averill back from the dead because Averill was never dead. Langiva simply drugged the girl in order to perform a “miracle,” basically admitting to Osmund that she did it because people need a show in order to follow someone.

The realization that he was the only one to kill Averill absolutely crushes Osmund, and we learn from Wolfstan that Osmund went on to become a hardened killer for the church, scouring the countryside to bring witches to justice. The problem is that he keeps seeing Langiva “in the eyes of the accused,” meaning he’s putting innocent women to death in an attempt to get his revenge on the witch that admitted she wasn’t even a witch.

It’s an incredibly powerful ending. BLACK DEATH rewards you for sticking with it and then sticks with an honest, if unpleasant, ending. There’s no happy ending here, because how could there be a happy ending during the plague? Love in the Time of Pandemic? BLACK DEATH is too smart for that. The moral ambiguity between the Christians and the pagans is strong because both sides are right and wrong at various times, and when Wolfstan is securing Hob in the torture rack and asks why he would follow the witch, Hob’s answer is stunning in its simplicity.

“Because she was beautiful,” he says, without regret.

And in a world ravaged with the plague, what better reason does one need?

SCREAM 2: Hello, Sidney. Remember Me?

Scream 2 (1997) – Directed by Wes Craven – Starring Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jamie Kennedy, Jerry O’Connell, Jada Pinkett, Liev Schreiber, Omar Epps, Elise Neal, Timothy Olyphant, Duane Martin, Portia De Rossi, Rebecca Gayheart, Tori Spelling, Luke Wilson, Heather Graham, Laurie Metcalf, and David Warner.

SCREAM 2 is both a really fun film and a mildly disappointing sequel. If you like the characters of Sidney (Neve Campbell), Dewey (David Arquette), Gale (Courteney Cox), and Randy (Jamie Kennedy), SCREAM 2 provides plenty of thrills and chills for the main stars, but if you’re looking for a story as solid as the original SCREAM, you’re likely to become increasingly disappointed as the movie progresses, as much of the cinematic energy is locked into the film’s opening half.

SCREAM 2 sees Sidney and Randy relocated to Windsor College. Sidney’s got a perky roommate/best friend named Hallie (Elise Neal), a perfect new boyfriend named Derek (Jerry O’Connell) and the same old unrequited lapdog in Randy. Everything is progressing spectacularly for Sid (including a sweet-*ss dorm room that they definitely did not have at Syracuse), whose biggest concern seems to be Hallie attempting to use her to get into a sorority. The lead sorority sisters (Portia De Rossi and Rebecca Gayheart) want Sidney in their sorority because notoriety is, like, wicked awesome or something.

The problems start for Sidney with the release of Stab, a horror movie based on the events of SCREAM. There’s a good bit of fun seeing the “real” transformed into the “fictional,” complete with Heather Graham as Casey Becker/Drew Barrymore, Luke Wilson as Billy Loomis/Skeet Ulrich, and Tori Spelling as Sidney/Campbell. The Spelling bit is an in-joke since Sidney complained in SCREAM that if her life was turned into a movie, they’d likely get Tori Spelling to play her. Just as writer Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven engineered in SCREAM, SCREAM 2 starts with a murder that’s personally disconnected from Sidney. Here, we have Phil and Maureen (Omar Epps and Jada Pinkett) getting offed at the premiere of Stab.

It’s a pretty good opening, with the same kind of “horror knowledge” interplay between audience and characters as we have in SCREAM. Phil and Maureen are black, and black people, as they’re both aware, don’t have a very high survival rate in horror movies. Unfortunately, where Williamson was willing to tweak conventions in SCREAM, here he mostly embraces them, as both Maureen and Phil are murdered during the showing of the movie. Later, Sidney’s friend Hallie (also black) similarly gets killed, even though it’s Sidney who’s being the dumb/brave one when she goes back to the scene of an accident to try and ascertain Ghostface’s identity. She goes back to the car and Ghostface isn’t there because he’s gone around the back to kill Hallie.

It’s an important killing that gets completely overlooked when it happens; it’s not that Sidney isn’t affected by the death, but it’s impact is lessened by its placement, coming in between Ghostface kidnapping them by hijacking the cop car they were riding in and Sidney’s mad dash to the theater house where the final violent act occurs. It’s the only death in the movie that’s really personal; Ghostface is revealed here to be Derek’s best friend Mickey (Timothy Olyphant), who keeps getting rebuffed during the movie by Hallie in several small scenes. It’s telling, too, that he makes certain to kill Randy, too, while failing to finish off Dewey, given that Randy is Mickey’s rival in film class. He’s also successful in killing fellow film class student Cici Cooper (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and his best friend Derek, suggesting that it’s the deaths that he’s most personally involved in that he sees through to the end. It’s the attempts on Sidney, Dewey, and Gale that come up short, and these are the deaths that his sponsor, Billy Loomis’ mother (Laurie Metcalf) has the most interest in seeing completed.

The revelation that Mickey is the killer is a bit lame because Mickey is gone for a huge section of the movie. Also, the swerve that local news reporter Debbie Salt is actually Mrs. Loomis comes up completely flat because for it to work two things have to be believed: that Sidney, Dewey, and Randy never see her in the pack of reporters (since Sidney recognizes her instantly) and that Gale doesn’t recognize her despite having multiple confrontations with her throughout the movie. Her insistence that, “I’ve seen Billy’s mom but she doesn’t look like that,” comes up short.

The worst part of this final act, however, is that Williamson and Craven decide to have Mrs. Loomis and Mickey act all bug-eyed crazy. It’s stupid. We did that last movie, and having stone cold killers would have been a nice change.

If you want to give Williamson and Craven some leeway, it certainly exists. The original script had Mrs. Loomis working with Hallie, Derek, and Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber) instead of Mickey, but when the entire script was leaked online, they were forced to re-write the film on the fly.

Either because the scenes were leftover from the original script, or because Craven and the actors had a real feel for how these characters would react in these situations, it’s the scenes between the returning cast members that work best. The growing relationship between Dewey and Gale is wonderfully played by Arquette and Cox; he’s miffed at her for writing less-than-flattering things about him in her best-selling book, The Westboro Murders, and she’s still drawn to him, increasingly seeing him as a real person instead of a source. As annoying as Randy is, his death sequence is very well done. Ghostface calls the three of them as they’re standing on campus and Randy is given the task of talking to him while Dewey and Gale go looking for him. When Randy gets close to Gale’s news van, the killer opens the sliding door, pulls Randy inside, and gruesomely knifes him to death.

Randy’s death is the only part of the film that feels like SCREAM 2 is its own film, rather than a cog in a franchise that demands as many of the popular characters, as possible, survive in order to guarantee the bankability of the third film. That’s not to say SCREAM 2 is a bad movie; it’s mostly an enjoyable film that balances a strong use of returning characters in an interesting enough story. Like The Empire Strikes Back, SCREAM 2 is also the film where the lead shifts from it’s first star (Luke/Sidney) to its more interesting character (Han/Dewey and Gale), and that’s why the film is ultimately worth watching, despite its limp, bug-eyed finish.