Summary
The film opens with sepia-toned images of the RMS Titanic embarking from Southampton, England, then shifts to the present day, where an array of deep-sea submersibles are descending upon the wreckage of the Titanic. Inside one of the vessels, team leader Brock Lovett records video footage and muses over the grandeur of the ruins. Brock's partner, Lewis, remotely pilots a drone into the shipwreck and finds a safe, which the men excitedly recover and bring to the surface. The jubilant team expects to find priceless treasure, but Brock is disappointed to find nothing but muddy papers inside the safe. Preservation archivists aboard the ship clean the papers and find an intriguing portrait of a nude woman wearing an enormous diamond necklace.
Elsewhere in America, a 101-year old woman named Rose Calvert catches a glimpse of Brock on television explaining how he recovered the drawing. She calls Brock and asks him whether he has found, "the heart of the ocean," and tells him that she is the subject of the portrait. Brock swiftly flies her out to the research vessel, though Lewis remains skeptical. After Rose settles into her new abode at sea, Brock shows her the portrait and explains that his team is primarily after a massive jewel known as "the heart of the ocean," believed to have been lost at sea.
Rose examines other recovered artifacts, like a silver mirror and a butterfly brooch, then listens as Lewis talks her through a CGI model of how forensic experts believe the Titanic sank: first by plunging into the water by the bow, then cracking in half down the middle, and finally vanishing underwater. Rose is at first overcome with emotion but remains determined to provide her testimony to Brock, Lewis, and the others. As Rose launches into her tale, the film flashes back to April 15th, 1912, the day the Titanic set sail from Southampton.
A young Rose steps out of a coach, accompanied by her fiancé Cal Hockley, and her mother Ruth. The trio board the Titanic, which Rose remembers as a "slave" ship consigning her to a miserable marriage in America. At a bar nearby, a penniless artist named Jack Dawson is immersed in a high-stakes poker match where two tickets for the Titanic have been wagered. Jack wins the bet five minutes before Titanic is due to depart, and sprints off to the ship with his friend Fabrizio, and they barely make it aboard. Jack and Fabrizio wave goodbye as the ship departs, and settle into their third class cabin as Rose and Cal unload artwork in their ostentatious suite in first class. Cal expresses distaste for the works of Pablo Picasso, whom Rose admires.
In voice-over, Rose recounts other notable passengers aboard the Titanic such as "The Unsinkable" Molly Brown, heir to a recent gold fortune. Jack and Fabrizio rush to the ship's bow and peer over the edge, spotting dolphins, and Jack ecstatically spreads his arms and shouts, "I'm the king of the world!" In first class, Rose, her mother, and Cal dine with Molly, along with Thomas Andrews, the architect of the Titanic, and J. Bruce Ismay, the director of the White Star Line. After provoking Cal's ire by smoking at the table, and offending her mother with an off-color remark about Freud, Rose excuses herself from the table and goes on deck. While talking to a fellow third-class passenger named Tommy Ryan, Jack spots Rose from afar, and Fabrizio and Tommy tease Jack about his starstruck expression.
Desperately unhappy as Cal's fiancee, Rose remembers running to the back of the ship on the first night, intending to throw herself off. She steps entirely over the railing before Jack, smoking a cigarette nearby, approaches her and tries to coax her back. Taking off his shoes, Jack tells her that if she jumps, he will have to jump in after her, even though icy water feels like, "a thousand knives." Rose finally relents and grabs Jack's hand, but slips on her dress and hangs precariously over the edge of the ship before Jack pulls her back over, collapsing to the ground.
Hearing Rose's screams, White Star Line officials descend on the scene, assuming she has been attacked. After Cal arrives, Rose improvises a lie about wanting to see the ship's propellers and slipping, before being saved. In return for saving Rose's life, Cal gives Jack twenty dollars, and at Rose's behest, invites him to dinner the following evening. Cal's valet, Spicer Lovejoy, makes a comment to Jack that suggests he remains skeptical of Rose's account. Later that night in their cabin, Cal gives Rose "the Heart of the Ocean," a diamond necklace, as a gift.
Analysis
James Cameron's Titanic aspires throughout to blend historical fact with fictional narrative, incorporating real-life historical figures, diligently researched settings, and reported testimony into its dramatization of the British passenger liner's doomed voyage across the North Atlantic. The decision to open the film with sepia-toned moving images of the ship's departure, which resemble stock footage but are actually a carefully staged recreation, reflects Cameron's desire to use the medium of cinema to magically transport audiences back to one of the most well known historical tragedies of the twentieth century.
Cameron uses the character Brock Lovett, and his mission to recover the "Heart of the Ocean," as a frame narrative for the film's major plot arc: the sweeping love story between penniless artist Jack Dawson and heiress-to-be Rose Dewitt Bukater. Cameron successfully convinced studio executives to allow him to descend into the North Atlantic via the Russian vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh to obtain firsthand footage of the RMS Titanic, the wreckage of which was only discovered in 1985. Brock's character develops from a cynical treasure hunter to a compassionate observer of history after hearing the full extent of Rose's tale.
The "Heart of the Ocean," a massive jewel valued at more than the Hope Diamond, is one of the film's key symbols, at once capturing the mystery of love, the power of memory, and the folly of greed, pride, and excess. Brock's dogged pursuit of the diamond is the plot device that leads to Rose's testimony, but ironically, by the end of the film, the power of her recollections has bewitched Brock and the others so entirely that his hunt for the jewel falls by the wayside. Rose's insistence on setting up picture frames in her bedroom aboard the research vessel reflects the premium she places on her memories. Other recovered artifacts, like Rose's butterfly brooch and silver mirror, also spur her memory, becoming symbols of loss and the passage of time.
The film stages a show-stopping, opulently-produced sequence to represent the grandeur of the Titanic's departure from Southampton. Cameron exploits the fact that audiences knew the fate of the Titanic by making liberal use of foreshadowing in the film's script, such as when Cal Hockley declares, "God himself could not sink this ship!" or when Jack tells Fabrizio, "We're the luckiest sons-of-bitches in the world!" Class is also a key theme in Titanic: Cameron joked that the film's vilification of the super-rich approached "Marxist dogma," and originally pitched Titanic as "Romeo and Juliet on a boat," given the seemingly-insurmountable obstacles that continually keep Jack and Rose apart.
As a vessel containing a vibrant cross-section of society, the ship is a fantasy space that creates possibilities between people who would typically never meet. Jack, although a destitute artist, imagines himself to be a "king" on the ship. On the other hand, Rose, soon destined to be a queenlike figure in Philadelphia society, longs to be liberated, calling the Titanic a "slave ship." Whereas the bow of the ship is a space of power and limitless potential, the stern of the ship (where Jack and Rose meet as she is about to commit suicide) represents grief and loss. From the very beginning, Jack is fully prepared to sacrifice his life for Rose, reflecting the classic theme of "love at first sight" that also invites comparison to Romeo and Juliet.
