Titanic review – still the biggest movie there ever was

It seems wrong – unfitting, undignified, even – to “review” a film like Titanic twenty-five years later, like an art critic being drafted in to offer their opinion on the Sistine Chapel ceiling two decades after the paint has dried. That’s not to suggest that James Cameron’s epic romance and Michelangelo’s fresco are untouchable or worthy simply by dint of their grand scale and technical heft. But Titanic lives on the success of its sheer size: the colossal technical achievement, the lofty romance between Jack and Rose that feels so believable after only three days, the elephantine emotional wallop that slaps your cheeks like frostbite. As both a ship and a film that’s so big and beautiful it seems doomed to buckle under its own weight, Titanic is representative of cinema itself.

The sheer mythos of Titanic that prevails in the collective consciousness cannot be overstated, or perhaps even matched elsewhere; the indelible image of Leonardo DiCaprio (devastatingly handsome) and Kate Winslet (never more brave and beautiful) embracing at the stern of the ship, windblown and soaring to James Horner’s iconic score, hasn’t lost its power. But beyond the two stars, every supporting character here is fleshing out the story beyond mere microcosm: what struck me on this rewatch was Victor Garber’s poignant subtlety as shipbuilder Thomas Andrews, and Kathy Bates’ empathy as socialite Molly Brown.

And even after several watches, seeing the film’s final hour on the big screen is an awe-inspiring and genuinely harrowing experience, with the technical bravura only enhancing the sense of human catastrophe as opposed to robbing it of emotional truth. What viewer can remain unmoved or stony-faced by the elderly couple embracing in their cabin bed as it floods with seawater to the mournful strings of “Nearer, My God, to Thee”? The wails of separated families on deck, as first-class passengers sail off to safety on lifeboats that are only half-filled? Jack’s teeth-chattering urging to Rose to live her life to its fullest as the icy water stills his heart in his chest? All you can do is sit back with eyes half-filled with tears as Cameron conducts an emotional symphony – a how did he do this? breathlessness as set-piece after set-piece somehow improves on the last in terms of jaw-dropping construction, editing, pacing and pay-off.

Who knows if we’ll get a film like it again – we all know that Cameron’s methods were bullish and often life-threatening, resulting in the cast’s chipped bones and near-drownings – and $200 million is now rarely afforded to films not based on existing IP (that ship has sailed, if you will). Titanic is a thing to covet like sunken treasure: a paean to the magic of moviegoing that may never be achieved again in the same gargantuan form.

Titanic is re-released in UK cinemas from 10 February.