October Baby

Year:  2011

Filming:  Color

Length:  107 minutes

Genre:  Christian/Drama/Inspirational/Romance/Travel

Maturity:  PG-13 (for intense thematic elements)

Cast:  Rachel Hendrix (Hannah Lawson), Jason Burkey (Jason Bradley), John Schneider (Dr. Jacob Lawson), Jennifer Price (Grace Lawson), Jasmine Guy (Nurse Mary), Shari Rigby (Cindy Hastings), Chris Sligh (B-Mac), Austin Johnson (Truman)

Directors:  The Erwin Brothers

Personal Rating:  3 Stars

***

    It is hard for pro-life films to be a success in a culture where abortion is all-too-often identified as a basic human right. I am confident that one day it will be a given that films will lament the horror of abortion, just as they rightly lament The Slave Trade and The Holocaust today. But that is all in the future, and it doesn’t help current Christian film-makers one bit. Hence, in spite of its many draw-backs, I cannot help but praise October Baby for its courage to look a glaring social injustice straight in the eye without flinching.

    Rachel Hendrix stars as Hannah Lawson, a freshman in college who begins to experience a strange series of physical and psychological ailments. When she takes part in a college drama and collapses on stage just after the curtain rises, she is rushed to the hospital where serious inquiries into her condition begin. The diagnosis states that all her symptoms are connected to the fact that Hannah had an extremely difficult birth. Not only that, but it is revealed that she is an abortion survivor and was adopted as a baby.

    Disillusioned and angry over what she perceives as a conspiracy and deception on the part of her adopted parents, Hannah seeks solace in her oldest friend, Jason Bradley, played by Jason Burkey. He invites her to come on a road trip with him and his quirky friends to celebrate Madi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana. He also indicates that they might be able to stop off in Mobile Bay, Alabama, the place where Hannah’s birth certificate shows she was born.

    In spite of her Dr. Lawson’s opposition to the plan, he lets her make her own decision, and Hannah decides to take the opportunity to go in search of her biological mother and takes to the road. In the process, she meets geeky Truman and his hippy cousin, B-Mac, the owner of the broken-down mini van on which they embark. She also gets the chance to get into a hot head-on encounter with Jason’s catty girlfriend, Alanna, who is jealous of his affection for Hannah and accuses of her trying to get attention through her various medical conditions.

    Eventually, Hannah and Jason find themselves making the trek to Mobile alone, getting into various scrapes and misunderstandings along the way and discovering that they really do need each other in more ways than one. Finally reaching their destination in Mobile, Hannah meets Mary, the former nurse at the abortion clinic where she was almost killed. In the course of the meeting, it is revealed that she also had a twin brother who died as a result of the abortion mutilation not long after he was born. Mary also tells Hannah that her biological mother, Cindy Hastings, is still in Mobile.

    Determined to find her at any cost, she creates a heart-breaking scene in the legal firm where Cindy works and is coldly repudiated by her biological mother, who has been trying to hide from her past from many years. Immediately afterwards, Dr. Lawson makes an appearance and angrily whisks a disgruntled Hannah back home, blaming Jason for encouraging her to look into her past and paving the way for the painful incident. But what is done cannot be undone, and Hannah will need to experience an inner spiritual awakening before she can rejuvenate her life and her ability to love.

    October Baby is a relatively small-budget Christian film, with some decent cinematic aspects to speak of. The music score is not exactly in unison with my tastes, but the lyrics in and of themselves are nice and the theme, “Life Is Beautiful”, supports the overarching moral of the story. Some of the visual shots are were quite striking, and the use of slow-motions filming was particularly poignant  in the scene where Cindy leaves Hannah standing outside her office, and Cindy’s little girl waves at her broken-hearted half-sister before the car pulls away.

    It is always difficult to get the perfect balance that makes an appealing motion picture, especially when working with limited resources, and production values is this film are not exactly tops. Much of the acting in first half of the movie is obviously acting, and the plot sometimes seems forced to hammer home the message. For example, Dr. Lawson sending in Hannah’s diary entry to the doctor and her hysterical reaction just seemed a bit manufactured for drama, as did her head-to-head with Jason’s girl-friend.

    I honestly found Hannah’s character to be quite difficult to sympathize with through much of the film, and her “friend” Jason was a close second. In fact, a behind-the-scenes interview revealed that Jason Burkley and Rachel Hendrix actually had better chemistry off-screen than on! Maybe I’m being a little picky, but the relationship between their characters was teeny-bopper to the max and lacked the depth and dynamics that make friendships between guys and girls fascinating. Hannah seemed to be stuck in a perpetual state of whining, whilst clueless Jason enunciated such epiphanies as, “Well…hey….like….this must be…like….really terrible for you….”

    I was really hoping for more insightful dialogue and mature emotional responses from the characters when faced with the problems at hand. But therein lies one of the main blots in the whole feel of the film: most of main characters have a definite lack of maturity, including Hannah’s parents. Their relationship with their adopted daughter is often erratic, such as her father revealing her diary entry and later ordering Jason never to speak to Hannah again after he finds them in Mobile.

    Alternately, her parents can come off as being rather woosy, letting Hannah snap back at them almost every time they try to communicate wit her and skulk around with a blatantly bad attitude. And then there’s the issue of her father non-chalontly letting her “make up her own mind” about going on an unchaperoned road-trip in B-Mac’s broken-down hippy-mobile with an assortment of quacky fellow travelers for a smash-out Madi Gras celebration in Alabama! While some of the incongruity of the road trip itself set itself up as an avenue for comic relief, much of the “humor” involving the B-Mac Brigade felt more forced than funny.

    I’ll admit that the plot picked up pace as Hannah came closer to finding out the truth about her past. The very fact that victims of abortion are finally being given a face through Hannah’s character is full of controversial implications long needed to be brought to the fore, and the scene where the former abortion assistant reveals the lurid details about the abortion industry is deeply emotionally intense.

    But this is not a judgmental film. On the contrary, sympathy is shown as much to the biological mother and abortion nurse as to Hannah and her adopted parents. I comment the filmmakers for finding two actresses who actually looked like they have been mother and daughter. Cindy’s refusal to acknowledge her daughter is heart-breaking, as much as the emotional reunion between Hannah and her adopted parents is healing. The scene in which Hannah and Dr. Lawson visit her brother’s grave, and he tells her how he used to hold her as a baby and be afraid to let her go after tragically losing three of his other children is a tear-jerking moment.

    In a gesture of solidarity between Protestants and Catholics in the pro-life movement, the Baptist Hannah is shown going into a Catholic Cathedral and finding spiritual guidance from the priest there, who says, “Only in forgiveness can you be free....forgiveness that is well beyond your grasp, or mine…..but, if the Son shall set you free, you will be free indeed." Catholic viewers will probably pick up on two inaccuracies here; namely, that the priest refers to “services” instead of “masses” and that he neglects to genuflect when entering and leaving the pew! Nevertheless, the ecumenical message was encouraging and appreciated for the spirit in which it was inserted.

    The finale was satisfactory for all involved, and hope wins out over despair. Hannah is reconciled with her adopted parents and starts dating the dingy but devoted Jason. Cindy is touched to the core by her biological daughter’s note of forgiveness and finally finds the strength to reveal her troubled past to her husband. Nurse Mary is also given new courage which enables her to return to the medical field, this time as a midwife.

        October Baby may not be the best picture in the realm of cinematic art, but the good intent of those who worked on it as a true labor of love is possible is priceless. The kindness of the policeman and his injunction to “hate the sin, but love the sinner” sums up God’s own compassionate attitude towards us. It also sums up what should always be at the heart of the pro-life movement. 

Hannah Lawson (Rachel Hendrix) steps onto the stage

Ben-Hur

Year:  1959

Filming:  Color

Length:  212 minutes

Genre:  Drama/Epic/Inspirational/Religious

Rating:  PG (for battle sequences and intense thematic elements)

Cast:  Charlton Heston (Judah Ben-Hur), Stephen Boyd (Masala), Haya Harareet (Esther), Jack Hawkins (Consul Quintus Arius), Martha Scott (Miriam), Cathy O’Donnell (Tirzah), Sam Jaffe (Simonides), Finlay Currie (Balthasar)

Director:  William Wyler

Personal Rating:  4 Stars 

***

    Call me biased, but once again I have to reiterate my belief that older films are by and large superior to newer films. This holds true in the field of epics. Then, screen spectacles had to be shot in a way that was grounded in live action. Now, they usually rely on an unhealthy dose of CGI. Among the greatest hallmarks of screen achievement in any era is the emotionally intense Biblical saga, Ben-Hur.  

    Charlton Heston stars as Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish Prince whose boy-hood friend, Masala, played by Stephen Boyd, is a Roman tribune. Returning to Palestine to assume a local command, Masala tries to pressure Judah to reveal the names of zealots during their long-awaited reunion. But while Ben-Hur agrees to use his influence to discourage insurrection, he will not inform on his fellow Jews. This causes the tribune to become embittered against his old friend.

    When Judah’s sister, Tirzah, accidentally knocks a loose tile off their roof, hitting the Roman governor in the head, Masala uses this as an opportunity to take revenge and has Ben-Hur, his mother, and his sister arrested for high treason. Even though Judah insists on their innocence and begs for his family to be released, the tribune coldly refuses his entreaties and has him sentenced to serve as an oarsman on a Roman galley. During the long trek to the coast, Judah is not allowed to drink any water. When he collapses, dying of thirst, a carpenter in the village of Nazareth defies the Roman guards and gives him water from the nearby well.

    After years of rowing in horrendous conditions below deck, Ben-Hur’s ship is sunk by the enemy. His decision to rescue the Roman Consul Quintus Arius results in his being freed from slavery and raised to the position of his chief charioteer, and later on, his foster-son! But Judah cannot settle into his new life in Rome, and decides to return to Palestine in hopes of finding his mother and sister and killing his old enemy, Masala. Along the way, he meets one of the Three Kings who is in search of the Christ he visited as a little child. He also encounters an Arab sheik who, ironically, has plans to compete with Masala in a chariot race.

    Given the opportunity to act as the sheik’s charioteer, he goes head-to-head with Masala and orders him to relocate his mother and sister, or else dire consequences will follow. He also rekindles an old spark between himself and one of the serving maid’s of his household, the beautiful and pious Esther, played by Haya Harareet. She soon learns the secret that his mother and sister contracted leprosy in the Roman dungeon and are now living in the infamous Valley of the Lepers. But upon their instructions, Esther tries to hide this from Judah by telling him they are dead.

    In reaction to this misinformation, Ben-Hur, determined to avenge his family, heads off to the racing arena to have it out with Masala once and for all. After the bloody encounter, he repudiates his Roman connections and determines to join the zealots. But Esther has fallen under the influence of a traveling Rabbi who insists upon peace rather than the sword. It will later prove that the love of this gentle carpenter from Nazareth will be more powerful then his seemingly unquenchable hatred of Judah Ben-Hur.

    Ben-Hur is truly a masterpiece of the film industry and fully deserved its 12 academy awards. It’s a saga rich with detail and dimension, unlike the flat-footed Titanic which was the first film to beat its award record number.  It covers the “big picture” with so much pageantry and panache, from ancient naval battles to lavish Roman feasts to the break-neck chariot race to the power of the Crucifixion. The acting is taut and gripping, and Charlton Heston is at his teeth-clenching best as the wronged Judean Prince. To this day, the production still has the power to enchant and astound.   

  

    As far as the plot itself goes, there are many strong core values and an underlying excellence. However, I must admit there are a few elements that strike me as disjointed and dully predictable. For example, Masala’s unbridled hatred for Judah and his family seems sudden and extreme for their previously close friendship and the comparatively minor falling out they had. What could have been a complex relationship between the former friends quickly devolves into a clear-cut “good guy vs. bad guy” plotline and remains that way for the rest of Masala’s cinematic existence.

    If they had tossed in another bone of contention between the two in addition to Judah refusing to be an informer, I think that might have helped things. I know love triangles have definitely “been done”, but something like that could have beefed up his reasoning behind the actions to some extent. Even then, more misunderstanding and less malice would have made for much interesting developments. Plus, I can’t help but wish Masala had made some move towards at least a partial redemption before the end!

    Another part that I found lacking was Judah’s attitude towards his Roman foster-father, Quintus Arius. Instead of making the most of his new-found prominence by searching for his mother and sister through legal means, he has to complicate things by storming back east to deck it out with Massalah as a charioteer for an Arab Sheik, who I doubt would have hired a Jew for the task in real life! Later, Judah even refuses to heed Pontius Pilate’s perfectly reasonable advice and decides to send back the ring his foster-father had given him and, in essence, disown him!

    One immeasurably difficult stumbling block that all Biblical films set in the New Testament come across is how they will portray Jesus Christ. Admittedly, there is no way of making everyone happy in this. How can an actor possibly capture that miraculous “something” that people saw in Christ’s face that caused them to believe He was more than a mere man? What of his voice, that penetrated the soul? What of his cadence, his habits, his physical attributes? How does someone act who is supposed to be fully human, and fully divine? No film is going to be able to properly capture the reality.

    Ben-Hur, wisely, doesn’t even try. Christ’s face is never shown, and his voice is never heard. It is all left to the individual viewer’s imagination as we see the reaction of others who come into contact with the teacher from Nazareth. After all, this is not meant to be a biopic of Christ, nor even on his Passion. Nevertheless, He is what the entire plot depends on for a powerful outcome. Otherwise, the other elements of storyline deficiency would have eroded the movie and turned it into another lack-luster The Fall of the Roman Empire.

    The only aspect I didn’t like about the screen-writer’s depiction of Jesus was his reference to Him wistfully wandering in the hills while His foster-father, Joseph, is slaving away back at his carpenter shop! If the image on the Shroud of Turin is to be believed, Christ was indeed a “man’s man”, strong, robust, and muscled from hard labor. After all, after his “finding in the temple” at age 12, the Bible says “He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them.” This certainly does not indicate any shirking of manual work or responsibility.

      But these comparatively miniscule foibles are literally washed away by the climactic ending at The Crucifixion. Esther beams as the image of saintliness, helping Ben-Hur, his mother, and his sister go to see Jesus preach. The result is different then she thought it would be, and they ultimately watch Him be put to death instead. It is then that Judah realizes He is the same man that gave him water in Nazareth, and that his life has indeed been guided by Providence. Healing comes to all of them in different ways, all the earth quakes and the rain pours down and mixes with the precious blood. This is what ensures the undying, all-encompassing potency of Ben-Hur for generations to come.

Masala (Stepehen Boyd) and Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) share a glass of wine 

Titanic

Year:  1997

Filming:  Color

Length:  194 minutes

Genre:  Disaster/Drama/Epic/Romance/Tragedy

Maturity:  PG-13 (for language, sexuality, and intense thematic elements)

Main Cast:   Kate Winslet (Rose DeWitt Bukater), Leonardo DiCaprio (Jack Dawson), Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), Frances Fisher (Ruth DeWitt Bukater), Victor Garber (Thomas Andrews), Bernard Hill (Capt. Edward John Smith), Ewan Stuart (First Officer William Murdoch), Kathy Bates (Molly Brown)

Director:  James Cameron

Personal Rating: 2 Stars 

***

    When you find yourself cringing almost every time the main characters make an appearance on screen, it’s a pretty good indication something’s not quite right. Thus is the case with James Cameron’s epic disaster flick, Titanic. While there may be some redeeming aspects in the latter half of the movie, they are incapable of successfully counteracting the cheesy acting, blatant immorality, and disrespect for another time period that is hammered home at every conceivable opportunity.

    Kate Winslet stars as Rose DeWitt Bukater, a wealthy young woman who is engaged to an incorrigibly villainous business tycoon named Caledon Hockley. Among his other manifold virtues, Cal is a narrow-minded chauvinist who treats Rose like an ornament he has purchased. Although it is indicated that they have already been living together as “husband and wife”, she is obviously fed up with him by the time she gets on board the doomed RMS Titanic and makes it her priority to throw herself overboard (as if she just can’t wait for the inevitable!).

    But before she can take the plunge, a devil-may-care, man-of-the-streets named Jack Dawson, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, manages to exert his boyish charm and pull her back from the brink. The next day, when Rose meets him on deck to thank him, it is revealed that he is a starving artist, and what little income he has managed to earn mainly derives from drawing naked girls in Paris and beyond. And amazingly for her sophisticated upbringing, Rose doesn’t seem the least bit disturbed by this little tid-bit. In fact, later on at a first class dinner he is invited to as a guest for saving her from “falling” overboard, she gushes about his talent to the assembly!

    Sensing her definite lack of chemistry with straight-laced Cal, Jack invites her to a third class hoe-down in steerage, where Rose drinks, smokes, stands on her tip-toes as a challenge to the “big men”, and dances a few Irish jigs with her naked-picture-doodler. Needless to say, when Cal gets wind of this, he takes it to heart. And the result is smashed up china and a sobbing Rose whose mother insists she submit herself to Cal’s tyranny in order to pay off her late father’s debts.

    But Jack is determined to “save” Rose and convinces her to declare her independence and go on a wild fling with him on the ship. This includes standing together on the guard rails of Titanic with arms to outstretched to create the illusion of flying (innocent enough for starters) and later posing for a naked picture (I can understand being a patron of the arts, but…..umm…..) with nothing but Cal’s engagement necklace, “The Heart of the Ocean”, around her neck. They proceed to a car parked on deck (no fear of them driving off with it, anyway; no keys!) and go “all out” in the back seat. Things don’t improve.

    By this time, what we’ve all been waiting for finally occurs, and Titanic meets her Waterloo in the form of a humungous iceberg. The problems that develop as a result of this don’t stop Cal from framing Jack for stealing Rose’s necklace and giving her a good slap across the face. (Frankly, I’m on his side for once!) As it becomes increasingly apparent that the ship is sinking, Rose refuses to get into a lifeboat and goes in search of Jack in the bowels of the ship where he has been locked up by the ever-forgiving Cal.

    The next sizable portion of the plot involves the three main characters chasing each other around the ship and surviving things normal people probably wouldn’t. The climax of this hide-and-go-seek game occurs when Cal tries to convince Rose to take her seat in a lifeboat, promising if he will get Jack off the ship safely. For a moment she believes him, but then thinks again (I don’t know why!) and leaps back into the ship through the Grand Stateroom window as her boat is being lowered. The result is a major smooch sequence with Jack, and then the appearance a very disgruntled Cal, shooting at them with his pistol!

    Needless to say, they manage to evade him, and, in keeping with his character, he rigs a way to get a seat in a lifeboat by claiming he has a child. (Couldn’t the officers deduct that he wasn’t really the fatherly type?) Down under, Rose and Jack are still running around, sometimes submerged in saltwater, and are only able to clamber up on deck as Titanic is tilting at an ominous slant and about to go under for good. By hook or by crook, both the main characters manage to survive the impact of the ship sinking beneath the waves by clinging onto the railing where they first met.   

    Plunged into the icy waters, Jack helps Rose to climb on top of a piece of floating debris that can hold only one person. He, meanwhile, remains submerged in the water and succumbs to hypothermia as a result. Before he dies, he makes the despairing Rose promise that she will survive no matter what, and go on to have a life and a family and die an old lady “warm in her bed.” When a lifeboat finally does show up looking for survivors, she takes a whistle from a floating corpse and blows it with all her might, enabling her to be found and rescued.

    And she does fulfill her promise to the late doodler, living to a ripe old age and coming back to claim the naked picture of herself when Titanic is finally relocated at the bottom of the sea and its treasures brought forth. This should be creepy for those involved, but the treasure-hunters’ main concern involves the whereabouts of her necklace, “The Heart of the Ocean.” As it turns out, she still has it, but promptly dumps it overboard to prevent it from being used for publicity reasons. Soon after, she passes away peacefully in her sleep and is greeted by Jack and all those who perished in the shipwreck in an epic reunion in a glorified Grand Stateroom. It is devoutly to be hoped that an art class isn’t on the list of party activities.

    For having a plotline so obsessed with the issue of “class”, Titanic notably lacks it. While I might say it is an interesting perspective to portray Titanic as symbolic of the “evils of the age” and make her sinking something of a necessity to usher in a better world with less pride and prejudice, the scenes range from melodramatic hyperbole to sensationalist stunts, with vulgar language and actions thrown in as some sort of “spice” that makes one gag. Most of the characters come off as being flat and two-dimensional, and their interactions with one another are equally prefabricated, thanks in great part to the modern acting styles and attitudes depicted.

    Cal is too stereotypically “bad” to be taken seriously. His every move can be predicted from beginning to end, expect perhaps the “Keystone Cops” chase scene he sets into motion by taking a few pot shots at the lovers with his pistol. That was simply too outlandish to be foreseen. On the other hand, Jack is not “good” enough to be a satisfying hero for me. Can Rose (or anyone) honestly believe he’s a respecter of the rights and dignities of women? He draws naked girls for a living, for crying out loud, and I don’t care if they did give him permission! The point is he is instrumental in debasing the female body as a source of lust for monetary gain. Plus, he seems to have no qualms about having sex with a girl he just met a few days ago in someone else’s car parked on the deck of a ship. Weird.

    The fact that Rose doesn’t find any of this the least bit sketchy just sets the stage for her own appalling impropriety. She seems to associate “freedom” with being able to drink, smoke, strip down to be drawn naked, and have sex with a virtual stranger in awkward locations. For all her “independent womanhood” and complaints about feeling enslaved, she certainly is selling herself cheap and diminishing any feelings of sympathy I had for her plight.

    I will grudgingly admit there are a few clear spots in the murky water. As some have said, while it may be the lousiest romance on the block, Titanic manages to be a decent epic in some respect. When the ship actually begins to sink, and the hopeless love triangle is not the main focus, the cinematic special effects have a frightening realism about them. We also get to see moments of human tenderness and endurance in the midst of tragedy.

     A priest comforts his flock by holding their hands and preaching a sermon from Revelation about the New Heaven and New Earth. An Irish mother tells a fairy tale to her children to quiet them, even as the water seeps below deck. An elderly couple lay next to each other in bed, whispering loving words, waiting for the end to come. Thomas Andrews, the builder of the ship, remains below deck in a state of disillusionment and stops the grand clock in the stateroom. The famous orchestra remains on deck and plays “Nearer My God to Thee” in the midst of the chaos. Captain Smith, distraught by his inability to save his passengers from their fate, retreats to his cabin where remains until the glass smashes from the pressure of the water and he goes down with his ship.

    I thought it was a nice touch that Rose chose to identify herself as “Rose Dawson” to demonstrate the way he had changed her life by ostensibly “rescuing” her from a confining future and giving her a chance to live a full life. This element of gaining a second chance is further highlighted by the close-up on the Statue of Liberty as her ship anchors in New York and the pictures that are shown lined up on her end-table in her elderly years. I was also relieved that the ending made some allusion to the afterlife, even if it was a bit corny and theologically simplistic, since it did succeed in giving the tragedy something of a hopeful finale.

    The music score is, for the most part, top-notch, especially the tracks “Hymn to the Sea” with it’s ethereal Celtic overtones, “Southampton”, booming with the grandeur of the great ship, “Titanic Set”, a series of Irish reels from Gaelic Storm, and “Rose” which introduces the love theme for the first time. Of course, this theme will be expanded and developed in the theme song, “My Heart Will Go On”, which I find touching if a bit vague in its meaning. With its connections to New York, the sea, and the afterlife, the film score tends to remind me quite a bit of my late grandmother.

    That having been said, much of the real-life heroics of the sinking of RMS Titanic are skipped over or minimalized in favor of creating a sense of purposelessness and taking a jab at “the old ways”. The stiff-upper-lip courage of the British officers on the ship is recast as nothing more than buffoonish pride. The English passengers in steerage are totally unrepresented, even though they formed the largest percentage below decks.    Instead, the Irish steerage passengers and English officers are pitted against each other to emphasize a more “simply understood” Anglo-Irish conflict.

    First Officer Murdoch, a real-life hero of the disaster, is shown shooting several rioting Irishmen before shooting himself out of guilt (which is complete fiction, so much so that James Cameron had to apologize to Murdoch’s living relations). If they wanted to add this little subplot for kicks, I don’t understand why they didn’t just create a fictional character instead of mangling the story of a real one.

     The order “women and children first” is made to look like a ridiculous vestige of chauvinism. The gentleman who goes down dressed in him best sipping a brandy is shown in wide-eyed panic at the end, as if his cool veneer was all just a game he played to look impressive. Even the “unsinkable” Molly Brown is deprived of her moment of gallantry, when she commandeered her life-boat and returned to pick up survivors. And it is worthy to note that while Jack may sacrifice his life for Rose in an admittedly heart-wrenching scene, we don’t see people given their lives for strangers in a more supernatural outpouring of love.

    But the fact is that noblesse oblige was made manifest repeatedly on board the sinking vessel, and it was authentic, not just a game to look important in front of others. Read real history, and you’ll soon see that it very much a part of what it meant to be considered a “gentleman.” It meant education and good-breeding, certainly, but it also meant something more. It symbolized the duty to be leaders and protectors, the stuff of which heroes are made. It was the Christian concept that the strong should defend the weak.

    The class system was perverse on any number of levels, and inequality was rampant. Women were often degraded to an almost sub-human level by men, and the working class was viewed with snobbish contempt by their “betters”. But the concept that men should defend women and leaders should lay down their lives for their subordinates and that death should be faced with grace and dignity is timeless. This is true even if Hollywood prefers a hedonistic, libertarian, populist worldview.

      Titanic has it’s moments of triumph amidst general movie mayhem, but this is the least the producers could do to save their romantic tragedy from going down with the ship. It is highly unlikely I’d care to watch it over again. To reiterate what I said in my review of The Last of the Mohicans, shallowness and cynicism pulled the plug on the bulwark of this film’s plot, and a good portion of it deserves to be locked in a vault at the bottom of the ocean, along with Rose’s birthday suit picture.  

Rose (Kate Winslet) and Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), surviving things normal people wouldn't!