Titanica (1995)
*** (out of 4)
Good, if rather routine, documentary about the sinking of the Titanic. The main attraction here is that there were seventeen dives down to the resting site of the ship, all with high tech lights as well as IMAX cameras. Having watched just about every Titanic documentary that I could get my hands on, I was a little confused by the mission of this film. I say that because the start of the movie talks about the various new bits of technology that's going to allow them to get some of the most amazing footage that has ever been seen of the ship. Great. However, once the film is over you keep asking yourself what exactly did they film for seventeen dives and why is it that so much footage appears to be missing here. The majority of the 67-minute running time (the home video version) is just like any other documentary in that we here about the building up the ship, about some of the passengers and then of course that deadly night when the ship hit the iceberg. We get several images of photos of the ship, newspaper reports and there's even some interview footage with historians and Eva Hart, a survivor. This is all fine but if the filmmakers were going to brag about this new technology it really does seem that they would have given us more images of the sunken ship and not just the same story. Now, with that said, I understand that some of the story was needed for those unfamiliar with the event but I don't think this should have been the main focus. When we do get images of the ship there's no question that they are quite breathtaking. The images are certainly haunting and crystal clear as well.
*** (out of 4)
Good, if rather routine, documentary about the sinking of the Titanic. The main attraction here is that there were seventeen dives down to the resting site of the ship, all with high tech lights as well as IMAX cameras. Having watched just about every Titanic documentary that I could get my hands on, I was a little confused by the mission of this film. I say that because the start of the movie talks about the various new bits of technology that's going to allow them to get some of the most amazing footage that has ever been seen of the ship. Great. However, once the film is over you keep asking yourself what exactly did they film for seventeen dives and why is it that so much footage appears to be missing here. The majority of the 67-minute running time (the home video version) is just like any other documentary in that we here about the building up the ship, about some of the passengers and then of course that deadly night when the ship hit the iceberg. We get several images of photos of the ship, newspaper reports and there's even some interview footage with historians and Eva Hart, a survivor. This is all fine but if the filmmakers were going to brag about this new technology it really does seem that they would have given us more images of the sunken ship and not just the same story. Now, with that said, I understand that some of the story was needed for those unfamiliar with the event but I don't think this should have been the main focus. When we do get images of the ship there's no question that they are quite breathtaking. The images are certainly haunting and crystal clear as well.