Titanic

I avoided Titanic like a demon a cross, but eventually it caught up with me... And oddly enough, it wasn't a head-on collision, but rather a light miss. The story is sweet and protracted, but as soon as the overgrown steamer began to sink, there was plenty to watch - I finally recognized it as Cameron's work. Surprisingly, I quite liked the unruly Leonardo DiCaprio, but I didn't know much about the bourgeois maiden Kate Winslet. It's just shabby love story that Cameron painted gold. In places the paint is sparse, so rust shines through. Definitely a classic seasonal hit... Edit 2012: beautiful proof of how often a person is wrong. To see this film as a kitsch love story actually hides the essence of what Titanic really is: the product of Cameron's massive fetishism and a metaphorical path to the coveted object that comes to life with the power of the film and allows the filmmaker to lead the viewer through its lost nooks. The director simply captures the feeling that still seizes me today when I look at a dead wreck in the depths - a burning longing to "give faded matter meaning and shape with a story". The result is a film full of contradictions, but above all a film extremely precisely constructed and economically told. All the pleasure from it comes from pure rationality. If Rose says: "It doesn't make sense, that's why I believe it," I say "Everything makes sense here, that's why I believe it (but I do not succumb :-))". (26/01/2004)

Watching Titanic again after so many years, in a remastered 4K and 3D version is a truly sensual experience. All the more so when you watch this 25-year-old opus and realise that a better film will be hard to find in cinemas this year. Titanic resonates even more intensely when its screening is preceded by trailers for Quantumania, parallel universes, digital fests of all kinds, in short, recyclates that either make your head explode or your eardrums pop. But as soon as the old familiar melody plays after 20 minutes of trailer hell and the black and white "old" intro with the silhouette of the ship comes on, I am in my element. In 20 seconds, James Cameron produces more emotion in two cuts than all those future supercomics combined. Titanic is a celebration and homage to modern filmmaking, a benchmark of cinema. It stuns with its breathtaking fragility, old-world wisdom, palette of iconic scenes and colossal epic. The pinnacle of world cinema and deservedly one of the best pieces of all time. One of the few that has avoided ageing. (15/02/2023)

Romantic drama that breaks hearts with every viewing, subtle jokes that, in the viewer's adulthood, reveal how complex Titanic truly is, and above all, Cameron's life's work. Only with a decent, soon to be twenty-year gap and the fading of the last remnants of the uncontrollable hype from the turn of the century, can the greatness of the entire spectacle be fully appreciated. Unsinkable, unforgettable, and practically flawless. And I have no doubt that it will continue to grow. (30/04/2006)

An opulent, spectacular picture which is simply flawless in technical terms. The outrageous length surprisingly didn’t break Titanic’s back, mainly thanks to Cameron’s directing. The end result flows by nicely, although there were a couple of places that could have done with more keen editing. The first half is more for the female audience, but then, after the collision, the disaster movie pandas more to the male audience. The characters are so terribly flat here, but thanks to their charisma, this isn’t boring. The most expensive movie ever and the greatest ever box office success, which is neither the highest quality movie ever, but it certainly is well above average. (16/03/2022)

With Titanic, Cameron finally achieved his benchmark in the field of the grandiose chick-flick, and its success then confirmed to him who really makes the decisions here about what’s worth a visit to the cinema.  Except that Titanic is also an insanely polished diamond in this regard, and it is almost irritating how clearly this can be seen in everything. Apart from the main love story, everything feels terribly mechanical, staged, stereotypical, and lifeless. Every character here has only one purpose: Rose's fiancé, for example, is almost comical in his villainy, always safely taking the worst side in every situation. Interestingly, the characters of Jack and Rose don't work on their own either, but thankfully they work perfectly safely together where it's surprisingly believable how Rose takes the initiative over Jack from a certain point onwards, to the point of motherly binding him to her bosom after their romp in the car leaves the boy so moved he's shaking. Unfortunately, the fateful night itself is terribly studio lit, the trick photography has aged a bit, and the whole space of the Titanic feels compromised to the point of theatricality. (06/11/2022)