James Cameron’s Titanic is packed with details that help take the audience back to 1912 to tell the story of Jack and Rose onboard the infamous title ship, and there are two very subtle details that make Rose’s story even better than it already is. One of James Cameron’s most ambitious projects is Titanic, a disaster drama movie released in 1997 and which was the most expensive movie ever made at the time, and it was so successful with critics and viewers that it became the highest-grossing movie of all time, a spot it held for years. Titanic is still considered one of the most impressive cinematic achievements, and there are small details throughout the movie that only make it better.
Although Titanic is based on the real-life tragedy of the RMS Titanic in 1912, the movie tells a fictional story led by fictional characters, with many others based on real-life passengers of the ship. Titanic is the story of Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet), a first-class young woman, and Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a third-class passenger who won his ticket on a game of poker just minutes before the ship sailed. Over the course of four days, Rose and Jack met, fell in love, and defended their romance from those who looked down upon them, and even though their story ended in tragedy as Jack became one of the many victims of the sinking of the Titanic, it was a turning point in Rose’s life.
By the end of Titanic, Rose was a completely different person, and she went on to live the free life she always wanted, far from the restraints of the upper-class lifestyle she had been subjected to since she was a kid – and Titanic subtly showed these changes in Rose through her costumes and hair.
How Rose’s Hair & Costume Details Make Her Story Better
When the audience met Rose in Titanic, she was engaged to Cal Hockley (Billy Zane), a man older than her, but her marriage was a necessity to Rose’s mother, Ruth (Frances Fisher), who told Rose that it would solve their financial problems and help them keep their upper-class status. Rose arrived at the Titanic wearing a very elegant yes restrictive outfit, gloves, and a big hat, very fitting with the clothes worn at the time by upper-class women, but as Rose and Jack’s story evolved, her hair and costume also gradually changed. The more time Rose spent with Jack, and thus the more she fell in love with him, her clothes became looser and her hairdos became less polished too, and the design of the dresses Rose wore throughout Titanic also became simpler the more she got involved with Jack.
These subtle details in Rose’s hair and costume are a reflection of how much she changed during her time on board the Titanic with Jack, who made her realize she was living a life that wasn’t hers and thus one she didn’t want, just to please others and fit into a mold that was imposed to her. Rose eventually became her own person and broke free from those restraints, which was reflected in her looser clothes and hairdos, and even though she didn’t have her happily ever after with Jack, she went on to live the free life she wanted, as seen in the photos of her life shown at the end of Titanic. The gradual and subtle changes in Rose’s clothes and hair throughout Titanic are yet another proof of the amount of detail James Cameron and his crew put into this project, and it makes Rose’s personal journey even more significant.
