Connections

Even with all the other holiday doings, the long weekend allowed me time to see two of the season's highly touted films, "Titanic" and "Amistad." I had guessed wrong about each.

"Titanic" is, as most of my peers agree, a mess. "Amistad," on the other hand, while in some ways larger than life, or grandiose, is a good film that veers from history less than expected.

I made the mistake of telling a 13-year-old girl that I didn't like "Titanic" much. "Of course, if I were 13, like you, I'd have loved it," I said, as she raised her eyebrows at my seeming condescension. The point I was trying to make, although I didn't have to make it to her, is that "Titanic," with its PG-13 rating, was intentionally kept at an intellectual and emotional level comprehensible to 11 and 12-year-olds. How else to guarantee mass appeal and the huge box office results needed to show profit when the film cost some $200 million?

"Titanic" was, indeed, the number-one movie at the box office over Christmas weekend, amassing some $36 or $37 million. It has everything, monumental disaster, a couple of villains, true love, courage, beauty, whimsy, and history on its side.

The film became irredeemable, at least from a grown-up point of view, when our hero was seen handcuffed to a pillar far below decks as water filled the ship's compartments and our heroine, after tremendous sloshing about, bravely broke open the cuffs with an ax. What a shame. All that money, all that effort, all that amazing underwater photography for a bunch of silliness with a meaningless fillip at the end.

Although I am sure some of the criticism about "Amistad" is fair, particularly about the role played by Morgan Freeman and historical detail, this is a movie with a profound message about the worth of human life. And it reaches its conclusion without reducing history to the lowest common denominators. There is no love story, only enough gore to show the slave trade for what it was, and, although it is a story about black and white, it etches the characters it portrays - except for Cinque, the hero of the shipboard rebellion, largely in shades of gray.

This is the beginning of the year-long celebration of East Hampton Town's 350th anniversary. If you can put up with a large dose of people shouting "This way," you may like "Titanic." But if it's the fictionalized presentation of history you're after, go see "Amistad."

Helen S. Rattray