A brief synopsis for the few people who have not actually seen this movie. Titanic is a love story set aboard the doomed ship. Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a young painter (from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin) who wins tickets on the ship in a poker game. Having very little money he stays with lower class folks on the lower decks. Rose (Kate Winslet) comes from a wealthy family and is engaged to a well off business man is on the ship with her fiancee and mother. Since they have money they get to stay in all the best accommodations on the ship. Jack and Rose meet one night when Rose contemplates suicide and Jack talks her out of it. Rose's fiancees gets extremely jealous and Rose's mom does not like Jack because he is lower class. But despite all that Rose and Jack form a bond and fall in love. After the ship hits the iceberg and begins to sink Rose and Jack stay together till the end while her fiancee tries to bribe his way on to one of the life boats.
I remember not liking this movie when it first came out but I was a 19 year old guy and this was more of a chick flick. So, I was curious how I would feel about this movie now. Well it turns out that I still don't like it, and for some of the same reasons. Not because it is a chick flick but because I think it is poorly written. The dialogue is pretty bad and some of it is just silly. I think this is reflected in the fact that out of the 13 nominations it did not receive one for Best Screenplay. Making it one of the few Best Picture winners that didn't even have a Screenplay nomination. While writer/director James Cameron can't write love stories his direction of the action sequences during the last hour are pretty exciting. Also, the stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio have gone on to become multiple Oscar Nominees and very popular stars so it was interesting to see them in one of their earlier movies (both had one previous nomination before this DiCaprio for Whats Eating Gilbert Grape and Winslet for Sense and Sensibility). But while Winslet gives a good performance DiCaprio is not very good in this one which is surprising since he has turned out to be a great actor. But Winslet did get her second nomination while DiCaprio would have to wait a few more years for another nomination (Winslet eventually won Best Actress in 2008 for The Reader while DiCaprio has still not won an Oscar).
Of course the other big win that year for Titanic was Best Music and Best Song for My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion, which if you were alive that year made you heard thousands of times. The win for Best Song marks the first time that a non-musical winner of Best Picture also won Best Song. Also, the last time a popular song won. Lately there has not been any song to win Best Song that has been in heavy rotation on the radio. Not sure the reason for that but the Academy has changed the rules for the nomination of Best Song but still seem odd that a popular song hasn't won.
Besides Titanic pretty much sweeping the technical awards (Editing, Sound, Art Direction, and Cinematography) there were other winners that year. My favorite movie of the year and the movie I think should have won Best Picture was Good Will Hunting. Nominated for 9 awards and winning 2. It's win for Best Screenplay was a bit of a surprise because Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were two relatively unknown actors and this was their first screenplay. But it was smart and funny something that Titanic didn't have. It also won Best Supporting Actor for Robin Williams in one of his best performances. The other big movie that year was As Good As it Gets. Nominated for 7 awards and winning 2. The movie had some of the best acting in it with great performances by Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear. All three were nominated and Nicholson and Hunt both won becoming only the seventh time that a movie won for both Best Actor and Best Actress. The movie was also nominated for Best Screenplay and just missing being nominated for the Top 5 awards by one Best Director nomination which is should have received also. Today most people will pick L.A. Confidential as the movie that should have won best picture. A complex crime drama with lots of great acting it was nominated for Best Picture and did win Best Supporting Actress for Kim Bassinger and Best Adapted Screenplay but was one of the least seen movies nominated. The only other movie nominated for Best Picture that was smaller was The Full Monty which was one of the funniest movies of the year but not necessarily Best Picture material.
The other interesting fact about this movie is that it is one of the reasons that I have become so obsessed with the Academy Awards. It was 1997 and I couldn't believe that this was the best movie of the year so I made it a point to see all the movies nominated for Best Picture. Making this year the first year I had seen all movies nominated for Best Picture before the awards were announced. Also, I remember watching the box office records fall and it is when I started paying more attention to the box office. So, while I might not have liked the movie a whole lot it is one of those movies that changed my life.
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