Becky tweeted about watching Titanic late last night. Switching channels, I caught the last 20 minutes or so of it. Darn it! I go years happily without seeing it but, thanks to Becky, I then felt compelled to watch it from the beginning. I couldn’t start watching it just then, though. If I had it wouldn’t have ended until after 5 AM. I went to bed instead, comfortable in the knowledge that when I woke up the urge to view would be gone.
It wasn’t.
So after taking care of some school things (or pretending to at any rate) I popped in the video – yes, I said video, not dvd – and watched it.
It’s a beautiful love story and of course I enjoy that aspect of it. But what really gets me is the history. The sinking of the Titanic fascinates me, and this film brings it to life in many ways; the footage of the wreck is both eerie and wonderful. A part of me always cries out “No! Don’t do it! Don’t go full-steam ahead! Who the hell cares if you get in on Tuesday instead?! And don’t send lookouts on watch without some damn binoculars!” And “Jack, if you’d just try to get onto that wood panel from the other side while Rose gets on from this one, your weights will balance each other out and you can both get out of the water. Why was that too hard to figure out?”
Seriously though, it’s gut-wrenching to me to watch this glimpse of the past, to know what’s going to happen to all of those people and to be powerless to change anything. I love history in general, some periods or events moreso than others, and I always have this reaction.
Was there an event or time period in history that affects you somehow when you think about it?
