Why Titanic is my Favorite Movie

     "Julia, you're a film person," you say to me, "What's your favorite movie, if you had to pick one?"
     "Titanic." I say, without hesitation.
     Your smile drops, your respect for me drains. You were expecting something highly regarded as cinema, perhaps not in the English language. Something that you'd never heard of that I would need to explain to you. Some mind-bending auteur film or a cult classic starring a method actor. Or, of course, anything from A24.
     But Titanic? The third highest grossing movie of all time, which is tied not only for the record for Oscar nominations but also Oscar wins (tied with different movies, I might add)? The one that everybody and their grandmother has seen that launched a multi-generational adoration with Leonardo DiCaprio and is basically just a melodramatic remake of Romeo & Juliet?
     Yes, that one.
     Titanic is my favorite movie of all time, and it's not even close. It's the ultimate comfort film; since the first time I watched it I don't believe that I have ever gone more than 6 months without rewatching it.
     Though I could go frame by frame through Titanic and say what is perfect about every single individual shot, I'll shorten it to five main reasons. I love Titanic because of my own experience with it, my tendency towards obsession, its relationship with its characters, the perfect structure, and what it meant for movies.

     The first time I watched Titanic, I was in eighth grade, and I was the disaster of a human that most eighth graders are. Everything in the world was overwhelmingly terrifying and the people were not the best. One Friday, when I had skipped out on going to a football game because I couldn't stand the idea of that many people, I was softly tearing up, scared that I was missing out on things I was supposed to do.
     "Jules," my dad said, "have you seen Titanic?"
     Within a few moments, the grand wreck was coming out of the darkness on screen, and over the next three hours, I fell in love with just about everything about it.
     It was complete comfort, every scene elegantly blending into the next so that the long runtime flies by. It allowed me to openly weep in a way that felt out-of-body. I could feel the majesty, the love, the danger. It allowed me to escape myself and, because of that first experience, I know that I can always turn to this movie when that is what I need to do.

     I am predisposed towards obsession. It's not enough for me to just like something, I need to like all of its surrounding things, all of its ripples. I need to watch every single deleted scene I can find. I need to watch Leonardo DiCaprio's entire filmography. I need to read eyewitness accounts of the Titanic disaster. And every time I find something new, I have to go rewatch the movie to see how it fits in, and it works every time.
     It's so easy to have something you're obsessed with, because you always know where to turn. Bored in class and out of things to do on your phone? You know which wikipedia page to pull up! Scouring Goodreads for the next book? You know what keywords to search! In the mood for a documentary? I'm sure you know exactly where this is going. Titanic is just such an easy thing to love, and with the public obsession so ripe and growing for a full century, there was no shortage of material.
   
     Titanic has a complicated relationship between portraying the grand and the human. It is a huge movie. It was so incredibly expensive to make that it led to fist fights at festivals, and every additional dollar spent was believed to be going down the drain. It's a huge story to tell, needing to accurately emotionalize the massive tragedy but also sensationalize it enough to marketable to mass audiences.
     About 18,000 extras were hired over the production of Titanic, and there's a story that James Cameron told each and every one of them abut their character, which would impact the way they did simple things like walk across the deck. This brings a profound life to the film and fills the boat with real people, making the tragedy that much more meaningful.
     And of course, Titanic isn't just about Rose and Jack. It's also about the budding friendship between Fabrizio and Tommy. It's about Ismay's battle with his own mortality. It's about rigid social classism and Molly Brown's interruption. It's about every officer trying desperately to convince themselves they're doing the right thing. It's about every couple split up for the last time on the deck. It's about Captain Smith's experience costing him. It's about every single person on board, and every single element of nature working together to sink the ship. And in doing that, it realizes and fantasizes a story at the same time, and epically grounds it in its thesis. When every characters is introduced, the camera holds on them for just longer than a second, giving the audience time to get to know them only by their clothes, surroundings, and the expressions on their face. From these shots, before any words are spoken, we know that Fabrizio is excitable, Jack is smart, Rose is soft, and Cal is rigid. We know that Trudy is kind, that Lovejoy is savage, and that Mr. Andrews is just doing his best. This alone embeds Titanic's message far deeper than anything else could by showing, not telling, us that each and every person is important and individual. And, to go back to an earlier point, that is exactly what I, at the sensitive age of 13, needed to hear.

    Titanic is evenly split into two parts: before and after the iceberg strikes. The first half is a dramatic story of star-crossed lovers torn apart by social classes, an ode to the appreciation of art, and a toast to the ingenuity of man. The second half is a thrilling tale of survival, a demolition of the protection that money grants, an escalation of barriers (sometimes literal) against the poor, and a warning of the folly of man's ego. Everything is turned around. The claustrophobia of one big ship that once brought our characters together has turned to damn them, which happens at nearly the same time that Rose abandons her own cage. Cal's power has evaporated. Ismay's ego has disappeared.

     I wasn't yet born when Titanic was released, but even I know the huge impact that it had on the movies. Its massive budget was a huge risk, meaning that if it had failed, movies like that wouldn't get made anymore. But it didn't fail. It exploded, creating a whole new norm of going to see a movie in theaters more than once, leading to its record ten month theater run (for reference, these days the average movie is in theaters for about 4 weeks).
     I love movie theaters, a feeling that is perhaps magnified these days because I can't go to one. There is something so special about seeing a movie in a theater, something about getting up and getting out, the plush seats and the people around you, that turns the whole thing into an experience that the movie deserves. I worked in a movie theater last summer, and that experience only served to heighten the magic of the movies.
      Though I never got to see it in theaters, being not even an idea the first time and still only 10 for its rerelease, i am grateful for its impact, and I feel like that is something that needs to be remembered right now, as we are questioning the future of movie theaters, as soon as they become safe again.