I’ve always thought of Brock Lovetts character as a representation of people who close themselves off to the humanity of the RMS Titanic’s disaster. He says, “Three years, all I’ve thought about was Titanic. But I never got it. I never let it in.”
It’s part of the reason I think the film is so widely hated. People identify not with the humanity, but with the disaster. And the film Titanic is not about her disaster, it is about the experience of BEING on that ship. That is why the sinking and destruction of her feels like such a huge payoff and is so emotional, because we see what she was like beforehand.
Titanic herself is a character in the film. We see how beautiful, how strong, how young she is. We get to spend those four glorious days of sunlight with her. We hear her groaning as she sinks, we hear the awful snap of her back as she breaks in half and claims the lives of 1,500 people, taking them with her.
It’s been 25 years, and people still don’t understand the real message of this movie: making it count. Nothing in life is guaranteed, and the people aboard Titanic had no idea that over half of them were being carried to their deaths. So while you’re here and still breathing, you should make it count. For yourself, and for all of the people you love that are no longer living. I think this film has very potent messages of life, death, and the passage of time, and the things left behind by people who have died, like tangible proof that they once existed. Much like the RMS Titanic herself, who sits in the dark on the ocean floor.
The people who perished in Titanic’s sinking are not just numbers on a wall in a museum… they were real people who suffered, and were tortured for the 2 hours and 40 minutes that it took for the ship to completely go under. They had dreams, loved ones, ambitions in life left unfulfilled. Some of them were children, and some of those children were newborns. I think it is important to remember that, and to hold that in your heart when viewing such a film. Those people mattered, and they deserve to be remembered.