Cranky Curmudgeon: "The Final Hours of Titanic"

M. Lion

Dec 25

The Final Hours of Titanic

Something I have always loved during My Life As A Reviewer is finding films that are completely out of the mainstream and fascinating in their own way. Just about the time I was getting up to go to bed I stumbled across something about the Titanic and clicked on it, thinking I'd watch a quick featurette. I've read more than a couple of books on the subject because of the historical significance of the sinking, beyond the huge loss of life. History, when looked at in the right way, is a massive series of fascinating stories that creates an elaborate tapestry. There is also a large scientific aspect to the Titanic story, beyond just the long search for the wreck and arguments over why the unsinkable ship sank.

I totally missed that the full title includes the phrase: Titanic Sinking In Real Time. It took a minute to notice the animated feature wasn't fast forwarding through the major parts of the story: going too fast for conditions, no binoculars in the crow's nest, narcissistic belief in the invulnerability of the massive and luxurious modern marvel, lack of safety features like having enough life vests and lifeboats and the necessity of using them. There is the cultural aspects of Edwardian society (just post Victorian) that created not a few of the problems that night, as well as lifetimes of condemnation for a few people like Mr. Ismay, who stepped into a lifeboat to abandon the ship he built.

All that kind of thing that I've read about for so long was touched on through the two hours and forty minutes of watching the animated liner sink, but there was no deep dive into any of it. The viewer watches the ship hit the berg and waits and waits, and waits for action to be taken. We all know how the night ended, but they didn't and it was fascinating to see how long it took for the men in charge to understand what was going on and how to deal with it. Because it happened in "real time".

The animation is very static. The ship plows forward through the starry night, finally slowing when the forward engine room floods and a loud steam wail takes over the sound. Until it stops, the viewer is treated to "real time" images of the sinking, which for at least an hour means the camera making endless slow circles around the ship while the time is occasionally shown and some tidbits about passengers and crew. For the first hour or so there are no human figures visible on the deck, and those only indicate people's position, not their action. We can hear snatches of dialogue that have become famous to Titanic scholars while we wait for visible signs that the ship is actually sinking. Eventually there are cuts to lifeless interior shots of water encroaching on the staterooms, with old fashioned game style water sounds.

For a while I wondered who the heck this animation was created for. Surely there aren't that many massive geeks like me who actually want to watch this super slow catastrophe unfold. Around the 45 minute mark I did waver and nearly gave it up when my viewing companion declared "This is boring." They took up their tablet to play casino games and I picked up my phone to visit my friends google and IMdB. All was explained! The reason this looks so much like a computer game is because it is an advertisement to the release of a computer game set during the Titanic sinking.

Did that make it more interesting to watch? No, not really. But the clock kept creeping forward and the distress fireworks were released at the proper times and every time a lifeboat hit the water we are shown how the 65 capacity boat had 12 or 25 or possibly 40 people in it. We begin to hear screams and the occasional gunshot, and the Titanic orchestra that played on the deck until the bitter end could occasionally be heard. We saw the doomed ship from the perspective of the Californian, whose captain could not be bothered to rouse from his warm bed to help, as well as the Carpathian pushing their single spout engine to its limit for hours to try and get there in time to help. We hear the actual agonizingly slow morse code broadcast, first sending CQD and then the now famous SOS, until the operators were forced outside by the icy waters.

The whole thing is slow moving, even till the end, as we watch from the perspective of one of the lifeboats as the aft lifts into the air, the screaming intensifies, and then there is just the dark night. Because it was "real time", the ship actually going completely under takes but a moment after hours of watching the bow go lower and lower.

Yeah, I did watch the whole thing, thank you very much. My biggest complaint was that ads kinda ruined the "real time" aspect because they added about thirty extra minutes all told. I do have a quibble with how the ship's final sinking was portrayed, but that's beyond the scope of this review. As a gamer, it was fascinating to see the graphics. They were super basic, but based on the tons of information available about what happened when. There was no ruminations on why anything was done or not done, just a depiction of events in the moments they happened that night.

Do I recommend watching this? Sure, absolutely give parts of this a whirl. You don't have to watch the whole thing, and can fast forward to the "interesting" parts unless you are a massive history geek like me who also enjoyed the gaming look. Google the sinking of the Titanic, it's a super complex (yes, I almost said deep) story of an event that changed a lot of things right before a huge war set the world on the path to modernity.